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LaTeX & Typst (papers, theses, resumes and slides) Module 7

Slides, posters and handouts interview questions

Interview questions on slides, posters and handouts: short warm-ups, then what each harder question tests, the first step of a good answer and its follow-ups.

9 questions: 3 warm-ups and 6 with model answers · Levels: Fresher to senior

Warm-up questions

Short questions with short answers, each answered in full.

Fresher to mid

How do a frame and a slide differ in Beamer?

Answered in the lesson Beamer: frames, overlays and themes
Fresher to mid

How does Touying decide where one slide ends and the next begins?

Answered in the lesson Typst slides with Touying and Polylux
Fresher to mid

What does a PDF/UA check tell you about a deck, and what does it not tell you?

Answered in the lesson Accessible slides, posters and handouts

Questions with model answers

What each question tests, the first step of a good answer and the follow-ups to expect.

Fresher to mid

Students say the handout of your 40-frame Beamer lecture is wrong in places: some pages show two alternative sentences at once, and one page gives away the answer of a quiz frame. The talk itself looked right. What happened, and how do you fix the source so that one file gives a clean talk and a clean handout?
What it tests

What the handout option flattens, specifications without a handout part, mode specifications such as handout:0, leaving frames out, and checking a handout page by page.

First step

Build the handout and read it page by page, for example with pdftotext one page at a time. A page with two alternatives at once comes from \only or \alt without a handout part, which the handout shows on every slide; mark the one that must not be printed with handout:0, and give the quiz frame <handout:0>.
Follow-ups
- How do you leave a whole frame out of the handout?
- Lists that build up show every item in the handout. Is that a problem?
- How do you check all 40 frames quickly before you publish the handout?
From the lesson Beamer: frames, overlays and themes
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In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Mid to senior

Your Beamer slides use the metropolis theme and look right on your laptop, but the PDF from the department's build server is in another font and its log warns about Fira. What is going on, and how do you make both builds give the same PDF?
What it tests

Themes that depend on an engine, reading warnings, checking a PDF's fonts with pdffonts, and making the build command part of the project.

First step

Read the warning and the server's build command: metropolis warns "You need to compile with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX to use the Fira fonts" when the server runs pdflatex, and then uses Computer Modern. List the fonts of both PDFs with pdffonts to confirm: FiraSans in yours, CMSS in the server's.
Follow-ups
- How do you make the engine part of the project, so that nobody builds it the wrong way?
- The server runs LuaLaTeX but has no Fira fonts. What then?
- Would you change the theme instead?
From the lesson Beamer: frames, overlays and themes
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Mid to senior

Your Touying slides build on your laptop, but the CI job fails with "failed to download package" at the import line, and the job has no network access. Why does the build work on your laptop, and how do you make it the same on both, now and next year?
What it tests

Typst's package path and cache, exact versions in imports, packages that import packages, vendoring, and pinning the compiler as well as the packages.

First step

Your laptop has the package in its cache from an earlier download, so it never needs the network; the CI runner starts with an empty cache. Run typst compile --deps on the laptop to list every package file the deck reads, Touying and the uniwarn package it imports, and vendor exactly those versions.
Follow-ups
- Why not simply give the CI job network access?
- Where do you record the Typst version?
- How do you move to a newer Touying later without surprises?
From the lesson Typst slides with Touying and Polylux
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Fresher to mid

After a lecture, a student says the handout you made with Touying's export-mode=handout is missing a sentence that was on the slides, although both come from the same file. How did the sentence get lost, and how do you fix the deck and keep it from happening again?
What it tests

What Touying keeps in a handout, the difference between only and uncover, handout-subslides and handout-only, and comparing a handout with the slides.

First step

Find the sentence in the source: if it sits in #only(1), or in any reveal that ends before the slide's last subslide, the handout, which keeps only the last subslide of each slide, never shows it. Then compare the text of the slides and the handout page by page to find every such sentence.
Follow-ups
- Which fix do you choose for a sentence that answers a question on the slide?
- What would Polylux's handout mode have done with the same slide?
- Can you catch this before the next lecture without reading every page?
From the lesson Typst slides with Touying and Polylux
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 2 minutes
Mid to senior

A conference asks every speaker for slides as a PDF/UA file, checked with veraPDF. Your 30-frame talk is in Beamer and fails 7 rules, among them the one that asks for a structure tree. You have a week. What do you do, and how do you show the result works for a listener as well as for the validator?
What it tests

Why Beamer cannot be tagged, porting to ltx-talk or Typst, the PDF/UA profiles, reading a structure tree, and lines that only early overlay steps show.

First step

Do not look for a Beamer option: the tagging status list gives Beamer no support, so the fix is another class. Port one frame to ltx-talk, which keeps the frame and overlay syntax, build it with LuaLaTeX and \DocumentMetadata{lang = en, pdfstandard = ua-2, tagging = on}, and check it with veraPDF's ua2 profile before porting the rest.
Follow-ups
- What do you check in the structure tree after veraPDF passes?
- Some frames use \only to swap text. What happens to them?
- Would you port to Typst instead?
From the lesson Accessible slides, posters and handouts
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Fresher to mid

Your A0 poster's chart shows two series as a red and a green line, with a legend in light grey on white and the abstract at 24 points. A colleague with a colour-vision deficiency cannot tell the series apart, and others find the legend hard to read. What do you change, and how do you check each change?
What it tests

WCAG contrast ratios and how to measure them, colour as the only signal, text sizes on a poster, and tagged posters with descriptions.

First step

Measure before you change anything: work out the contrast ratio of the legend's grey on white with the WCAG formula, and look at the chart in a colour-blindness simulator. A light grey such as #aaaaaa gives 2.32:1, far below 4.5:1; red and green that differ only in hue look alike to many readers.
Follow-ups
- What do you change in the chart itself?
- How large should the text be?
- How do you make sure the chart reaches a screen reader too?
From the lesson Accessible slides, posters and handouts
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes

All LaTeX & Typst (papers, theses, resumes and slides) interview questions · The LaTeX & Typst (papers, theses, resumes and slides) track

Warm-up questions

How do a frame and a slide differ in Beamer?

How does Touying decide where one slide ends and the next begins?

What does a PDF/UA check tell you about a deck, and what does it not tell you?

Questions with model answers

Your Beamer slides use the metropolis theme and look right on your laptop, but the PDF from the department's build server is in another font and its log warns about Fira. What is going on, and how do you make both builds give the same PDF?

Your Touying slides build on your laptop, but the CI job fails with "failed to download package" at the import line, and the job has no network access. Why does the build work on your laptop, and how do you make it the same on both, now and next year?

After a lecture, a student says the handout you made with Touying's export-mode=handout is missing a sentence that was on the slides, although both come from the same file. How did the sentence get lost, and how do you fix the deck and keep it from happening again?

A conference asks every speaker for slides as a PDF/UA file, checked with veraPDF. Your 30-frame talk is in Beamer and fails 7 rules, among them the one that asks for a structure tree. You have a week. What do you do, and how do you show the result works for a listener as well as for the validator?