“missing item” in article mode using automatic uncover [beamer]

Question

I tried to use the automatic uncover option (beamer user guide, section 23.1) as follows:

% file test.tex

\begin{document}

This is a test.
\begin{frame}
\begin{itemize}[<+->]
\item First
\item Second
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}

% file test.beamer.tex to produce the actual presentation; works as expected.

\documentclass[ignorenonframetext]{beamer} 
\input{test.tex}

% file test.article.tex

\documentclass{article} 
\usepackage{beamerarticle}
\setjobnamebeamerversion{test8.beamer}
\input{test8.tex}
\end{document}

which gives the following error:

! LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...                                              

l.6      \item F
               irst

The actual presentation has a lot of lists of items, making the automatic uncovering most desirable. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

This was a bug which existed in beamer up to version 3.10. It is fixed in the current release (3.12), which for TeX Live can be installed using

tlmgr update beamer

at the command line. You may need sudo/Administrator privileges depending on how TeX Live was installed.

Answer 2

Specifying a default overlay specification for itemize doesn't work with beamerarticle here, however it compiles both in presentation and in article mode if you specify it to \item in your test.tex file which you input:

\begin{itemize}
\item<+-> First
\item<+-> Second
\end{itemize}

It seems to be a bug, see comp.text.tex, so you could check if it's fixed in a newer beamer version and you don't need this workaround if you update.