emacs org mode to beamer: how to do multicolumn text

Question

I'm trying to display two columns of itemizes next to each other on a beamer document written in emacs org mode. For the export, I followed this tutorial: http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2009/10/writing-presentations-with-org-mode-and.html

I tried to include latex code in the document

\begin{columns}
\column{0.45\textwidth}
- topic
    - subtopic
    - sub
- topic
\column{0.45\textwidth}
- topic
- topic
\end{columns}

This put the columns next to each other as wanted, but the list inbetween was just plain text in a single line. As I use org mode to avoid writing all the latex code by hand, I tried a couple of tutorials.

They all suggested something like

*** list heading
:OPTIONS:
:BEAMER_col: 0.45
:END:
<content>

Which was completely ignored in my output. When I insert tags like :BCOL: after the heading, they get displayed as plain text on the resulting slides When I moved the :END: down like this:

*** list heading
:OPTIONS:
:BEAMER_col: 0.45
<content>
:END:

then sometimes the headings got moved to columns. I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong, if the tutorials are outdated, or if my emacs version is. I don't have administrative access to the machine here, and don't think I can talk the admin into updating 1000+ machines just for my document ;-)

Other beamer environments like :BEAMER_env: block get ignored, too.

Emacs 23.4.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.10) of 2012-09-08 on trouble, modified by Debian

Thanks for your help.

Carolinian

Answer 1

The following does work for me (with Org 8).

* Slide

** Col left                                                             :BMCOL:
   :PROPERTIES:
   :BEAMER_col: 0.45
   :END:

- topic
    - subtopic
    - sub
- topic

** Col right                                                            :BMCOL:
   :PROPERTIES:
   :BEAMER_col: 0.45
   :END:

- topic
- topic

See http://screencast.com/t/snlR2ii0xTZ for the results.

Unorthodox

Weird, this gives me two slides titled "Col left" and "Col right". Has something changed, or do I need header options? – Donnell

Ah, the interaction with the #+OPTIONS: H:1 is important, solved. I had H:2, hence * Section, ** Slide, *** Column. It seems that the tag BMCOL is now called B_column (though the old tag still works) and can be added to a header using C-c C-b c. – Donnell

Answer 2

And if you want to have the columns vertically aligned at the top, add :BEAMER_opt: [t], as in the example below. Use :BEAMER_opt: [T] instead if your columns include graphics.

* Slide

** Col left                                                           :BMCOL:
   :PROPERTIES:
   :BEAMER_col: 0.45
   :BEAMER_opt: [t]
   :END:

- topic
    - subtopic
    - sub
- topic

** Col right                                                          :BMCOL:
   :PROPERTIES:
   :BEAMER_col: 0.45
   :BEAMER_opt: [t]
   :END:

- topic
- topic

Scurrile