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Beamer is a class for LaTeX presentations which has matured to the point of being stable and usable. It also produces VERY pretty and very readable output. Here is how to install Beamer on your Mac.

(Credit: I learned how to do the installation from the following webpage: http://www.arthurkoziel.com/2008/06/02/how-to-install-latex-beamer-for-tex-live-on-mac-os-x/)

First, download Beamer and its required dependencies, which are xcolor and pgf. The links are

• latex-beamer
• pgf
• xcolor

Then perform extraction by opening a Terminal and typing

tar xvzf beamer-3-10.tar.bz3
tar xvzf xcolor-2.00.tar.gz
tar xvzf pgf-1.01.tar.gz

(or whatever the appropriate filenames are).

Next, create a directory in the texmf tree and place the above files there by typing these commands into Terminal:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/{beamer,pgf,xcolor}
sudo mv beamer-3-10/* /opt/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/beamer/
sudo mv pgf-1.01/* /opt/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/pgf/
sudo mv xcolor-2.00/* /opt/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/xcolor/


Finally, let TeX know about your new files by typing in Terminal

sudo texhash

(If this last step doesn’t work, don’t worry. Rebooting your computer will accomplish the desired result too.)

That’s it! Look inside /opt/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/beamer/doc/beameruserguide.pdf for the user manual and /opt/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/beamer/examples/ for sample presentations.

Your output will look something like this: