Proper page size for slides

Question

I'm just going to use the standard article class to create my slides manually.

The question is, what pagesize is appropriate, and why? Should I take into account my projector's resolution and/or the laptop's resolution?

How should I set a custom pagesize, in case I need a substandard one?

Actually: I used a projector at school once and gave a presentation of slides created with Beamer. It worked fine (although I'm not sure I could have improved the resolution to better fit the projector/laptop). How can I bring the default Beamer pagesize over to the article class? That might work too.

Answer 1

The default page size in a beamer presentation is 12.8cm x 9.6cm (a 4:3 aspect ratio) with a font size of 11pt. The page size is set using geometry using the following additional default settings:

\RequirePackage[%
  papersize={\beamer@paperwidth,\beamer@paperheight},
  hmargin=1cm,%
  vmargin=0cm,%
  head=0.5cm,% might be changed later
  headsep=0pt,%
  foot=0.5cm% might be changed later
  ]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry

In the above, \beamer@paperwidth and \beamer@paperheight is set based on the required aspect ratio. Also as mentioned in comments above, the values of head and foot may change, depending on the requirements provided by the template/theme used. Using these default settings, you can create your own slides in the article document class using:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[%
  papersize={12.8cm,9.6cm},
  hmargin=1cm,%
  vmargin=0cm,%
  head=0.5cm,% might be changed later
  headsep=0pt,%
  foot=0.5cm% might be changed later
  ]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\begin{document}
\textbf{\Large Frame title}

Here is some text on a ``frame''.
\end{document}

The basic idea behind keeping a small page size is to minimize (or "lessen") the amount of content on each slide, since viewers are not supposed to read manuscripts on the each frame.

For different aspect ratios, here are the other beamer defaults, declared using the key aspectratio:

\DeclareOptionBeamer{aspectratio}[43]{%
  \ifnum#1=1610% 16:10
    \beamer@paperwidth 16.00cm%
    \beamer@paperheight 10.00cm%
  \else\ifnum#1=169% 16:9
    \beamer@paperwidth 16.00cm%
    \beamer@paperheight 9.00cm%
  \else\ifnum#1=149% 14:9
    \beamer@paperwidth 14.00cm%
    \beamer@paperheight 9.00cm%
  \else\ifnum#1=54% 5:4
    \beamer@paperwidth 12.50cm%
    \beamer@paperheight 10.00cm%
  \else\ifnum#1=43% 4:3
    \beamer@paperwidth 12.80cm%
    \beamer@paperheight 9.60cm%
  \else\ifnum#1=32% 3:2
    \beamer@paperwidth 13.50cm%
    \beamer@paperheight 9.00cm%
  \fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi%
}