# How is \onslide supposed to behave with the plus operator?

I'm writing a presentation, using the beamer document class, with a long sequence of overlays. Since I know I will have to insert new slides in the middle of the sequence, I'm trying to use the plus operator in the overlay specifications.

If I try to specify \onslide<+-+>{<text>}, however, I would expect the text to be on two subsequent slides. That's at least what happens when I use numbers instead of the plus sign. With this syntax, anyway, the <text> is only displayed on one single slide.

What's the expected behaviour of such a syntax? How could I obtain the result I expected?

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Welcome to TeX.SX! Please add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. –  Ruben Dec 4 '13 at 11:35

Allow me to quote the Beamer User Guide (section 9.6.4):

The effect of the +-sign is the following: You can use it in any overlay specification at any point where you would usually use a number. If a +-sign is encountered, it is replaced by the current value of the LaTeX counter beamerpauses, which is 1 at the beginning of the frame. Then the counter is increased by 1, though it is only increased once for every overlay specification, even if the specification contains multiple +-signs (they are replaced by the same number).

(emphasis is mine)

As an example, consider the following code:

\documentclass{beamer}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\thebeamerpauses

\onslide<+->{
text

\thebeamerpauses
}
\onslide<+->{
text

\thebeamerpauses
}
\end{frame}
\end{document}


At the beginning of the frame the beamerpauses counter is set to 1 (first slide). The content of the first \onslide command goes into the first slide and then the beamerpauses counter is increased by 1, so that the content of the second \onslide command will be shown in the second slide and then the counter will be increased again.

You could achieve your goal (assuming the subsequent slides are slides 2 and 3) with \onslide<+-3>{text}, so that the content will be shown in in slides 1,2 and 3 and if you add another \onslide<+->{text} after the first its content will be shown from slide 2 on. But I'm not sure this is an actual solution for your problem since you have not provided enough context about your second question.

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