Patch beamerouterthemedefault.sty to remove mini slide on Beamer notes pages

Question

In a previous question, I pointed out that the mini slides (thumbnails) inserted into Beamer notes pages cause replication of labels and broken hyperref links as a result (see comment 2 under Percusse's answer).

I discovered that if I went to beamerouterthemedefault.sty and, under the line \defbeamertemplate*{note page}{default} commented out the lines

\hfill\insertslideintonotes{0.25}\hskip-\Gm@rmargin\hskip0pt%
\vskip-0.25\paperheight%
\nointerlineskip

this removes the problem since the mini slide is no longer inserted. I now need to share my LaTeX code with my supervisor, so I am wondering if an approach similar to that employed in an answer to another question of mine can be used to "patch" these lines to be commented at compile time so that I don't have to instruct others to manually comment out those lines. In that question, it is shown how to use xpatch to modify a Beamer component.

So, my main question is how to make this patch.

My follow-up or bonus questions is, is there a better way to address this issue with the mini slides in the first place? Off the top of my head, here are a few thoughts:

1. This seems like a bug in Beamer, and an easy one to fix. Can't the mini slides have their labels stripped out before they're inserted? The mini slides are really only a visual aid, so there doesn't need to be a way to reference stuff in them.

2. As an improvement on #1, if the labels could be automatically renamed by Beamer or Latex as the mini slides are inserted, that would be even better.

3. If either of #1 or 2 could be done with a patch that would be great, but it would be even better if this could be rolled into Beamer as bug fix. What's involved in doing so, or how would this normally happen?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If all that you really require is to get rid of those lines of code, there's no need to change the original .sty file (in fact, this is never advisable); instead, you can simply add to the preamble of your .tex document the following lines of code:

\makeatletter
\setbeamertemplate{note page}
{%
  {%
    \scriptsize
    \insertvrule{.25\paperheight}{white!90!black}
    \vskip-.25\paperheight
    \nointerlineskip
    \vbox{
      %\hfill\insertslideintonotes{0.25}\hskip-\Gm@rmargin\hskip0pt%
      %\vskip-0.25\paperheight%
      %\nointerlineskip
      \begin{pgfpicture}{0cm}{0cm}{0cm}{0cm}
        \begin{pgflowlevelscope}{\pgftransformrotate{90}}
          {\pgftransformshift{\pgfpoint{-2cm}{0.2cm}}%
          \pgftext[base,left]{\footnotesize\the\year-\ifnum\month<10\relax0\fi\the\month-\ifnum\day<10\relax0\fi\the\day}}
        \end{pgflowlevelscope}
      \end{pgfpicture}}
    \nointerlineskip
    \vbox to .25\paperheight{\vskip0.5em
      \hbox{\insertshorttitle[width=8cm]}%
      \setbox\beamer@tempbox=\hbox{\insertsection}%
      \hbox{\ifdim\wd\beamer@tempbox>1pt{\hskip4pt\raise3pt\hbox{\vrule
            width0.4pt height7pt\vrule width 9pt
            height0.4pt}}\hskip1pt\hbox{\begin{minipage}[t]{7.5cm}\def\breakhere{}\insertsection\end{minipage}}\fi%
      }%
      \setbox\beamer@tempbox=\hbox{\insertsubsection}%
      \hbox{\ifdim\wd\beamer@tempbox>1pt{\hskip17.4pt\raise3pt\hbox{\vrule
            width0.4pt height7pt\vrule width 9pt
            height0.4pt}}\hskip1pt\hbox{\begin{minipage}[t]{7.5cm}\def\breakhere{}\insertsubsection\end{minipage}}\fi%
      }%
      \setbox\beamer@tempbox=\hbox{\insertshortframetitle}%
      \hbox{\ifdim\wd\beamer@tempbox>1pt{\hskip30.8pt\raise3pt\hbox{\vrule
            width0.4pt height7pt\vrule width 9pt
            height0.4pt}}\hskip1pt\hbox{\insertshortframetitle[width=7cm]}\fi%
      }%
      \vfil}%
  }%
  \vskip.25em
  \nointerlineskip
  \insertnote
}
\makeatother