Simbe is an ultralight markup language developed for creating and modifying math and/or programming language heavy slides quickly. I created it first in 2013 when I had to prepare 600+ slides for teaching a new course. For slides containing math, PowerPoint and Keynote are not feasible options, and this is where LaTeX Beamer shines. However, LaTeX can be heavy in markup overhead, especially when writing bulleted lists. Another realization was that for most slides, there are really only a handful of things I need to do: add bullets, indent bullets, add mathematical notation, add syntax highlighted code, and add figures. These cover about 99% of what I'd like to have on my teaching slides.
Simbe is a very simple LaTeX preprocessor written in Python 3. The name is short for Simple LaTeX Beamer. The script converts a Simbe text file (slides.simbe.tex) to a standard LaTeX Beamer file (slides.tex). The latter is then compiled using LaTeX to generate PDF slides. If Simbe (simbe.py) and the source slides (slides.simbe.tex) are in the same directory, then all you need is type the following in a terminal:
python simbe.py slides.simbe.tex
The output file slides.tex will be saved in the same directory. All properties of your slides (color scheme, font sizes, etc.) are specified in beamber_setup.tex. Syntax highlighting is set up for Python, but if you're using a different language, you can modify the setting in that setup file.
The syntax and functionality of Simbe are by design extremely simple. Operators start in the leftmost position in the source file; the only exception is nested bullets, which are created by hitting tab (once or more) and then inserting the bullet operator. With the exception of the new slide operator, which is the asterisk ('*') and appears on its own, all other operators consist of a pair (begin,end) of two or more dashes. As a useful mnemonic, the number of dashes in the name of the operator corresponds to the number of characters in the following abbreviations: eq (--: show equation in display mode), fig (---: show figure), code (----: show syntax highlighted typed code), codes (-----: show syntax highlighted code inserted from a file). If you don't want numbered equations, you can use the nn (no number) option below. Inline equations are created with the usual $p=mv$ LaTeX syntax.
Syntax for Simbe:
- Create a new slide and title
**History of Science - Insert bullet and indented bullet
-There are a few famous equations in science. -Some are more famous than others. - Insert numbered equation
--E=mc^2---- E=mc^2 -- - Insert non-numbered equation
--E=mc^2--nn-- E=mc^2 --nn - Insert figure; specify relative width; add caption (optional)
--- my_figure.pdf, 0.4 -This is the caption, which uses the same syntax as Simbe bullets. --- - Insert syntax highlighted code
---- print("Hello world.") ---- - Insert syntax highlighted code segment from file
-----my_code.py-----
To run the example, copy simbe.py and beamber_setup.tex to the example folder. Then execute the following in a terminal:
python simbe.py slides.simbe.tex
The output you get should be identical to the slides.tex in the output subfolder of example. If you then compile those to PDF, you should get an output that looks like slides.pdf, also located in the output subfolder. The figure below shows the simbe source file on the left and compiled PDF slides on the right.
