Enlarged Characters

Question

for a presentation about Chinese characters I need to enlarge a single character so that it takes about the size of 1/4 of the page (I plan to show 4 different characters in some kind of grid, which I am currently producing by using columns... probably not the best way, so I would be glad for tips in that perspective too)

I would really appreciate your help here.

Answer 1

You can use \resizebox{<width>}{<height>}{<stuff>} from graphicx:

\documentclass{beamer}% http://ctan.org/pkg/beamer
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}\frametitle{First character}
\resizebox{!}{.3\textheight}{A}
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}\frametitle{Second character}
\resizebox{!}{.3\textheight}{B}
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}\frametitle{Third character}
\resizebox{!}{.3\textheight}{C}
\end{frame}
\begin{frame}\frametitle{Fourth character}
\resizebox{!}{.3\textheight}{D}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Or, you could use \scalebox{<factor>}{<stuff>} in a tabular:

\documentclass{beamer}% http://ctan.org/pkg/beamer
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
\begin{document}

\begin{frame}\frametitle{Big letters}
\begin{center}
  \scalebox{8}{%
  \begin{tabular}{c@{\hspace{5pt}}c}
    A & B \\
    C & D
  \end{tabular}%
  }
\end{center}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Just because there has to be one: here is a TikZ-based solution

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[fragile]
    \frametitle{Four Letters}
    \vfill
    \begin{center}
    \begin{tikzpicture}[transform canvas={scale=10}, inner sep=0.1em]
        \matrix [matrix of nodes] (m) {
            A & B \\
            C & D \\
        };
    \end{tikzpicture}
    \end{center}
    \vfill
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Change the scale parameter to vary the size and the inner sep to vary the distance between the letters.

Answer 3

If the characters to enlarge are just a few you can create a document for each of them using the standalone class that gives you a PDF without the white parts. After, you can include the character in your document like an image, using \includegraphics specifying the desired dimensions. An example of the document would be:

\documentclass{standalone}

\begin{document}
A
\end{document}