Beamer not respecting changes in footline height

Question

It looks like beamer is ignoring changes in the size of template elements.

I have the following minimal example:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=3ex,dp=1ex]{}
FirstFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{FirstSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{%
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=3ex,dp=1ex]{}%
SecondFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{SecondSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\end{document}

This document renders as expected.

Now let us make a very small change and increase the ht parameter of the first footline to 30.

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=30ex,dp=1ex]{}% Set
FirstFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{FirstSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{%
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=3ex,dp=1ex]{}% Ignored
SecondFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{SecondSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Beamer respects the change in the footer text from the first to the second template specification but ignores the height of the second specification.

And now let's make the reverse test:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=3ex,dp=1ex]{}% Set
FirstFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{FirstSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{%
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=30ex,dp=1ex]{}% Ignored
SecondFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{SecondSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Now again beamer honors the height of the first footline template. When later the height of the second footline is increased, the change is ignored in the layout and the text of the second footline consequently is pushed off the page.

Thus it looks like beamer ignores changes in the footline height.

Is this a bug?

How would I change the height of a footline?

As a dog, your knowledge is astounding to me! I can barely bark. — hola, Oct 07 '20 at 14:20

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 07 '20 at 10:41

1

From the beamer user guide (section 8.2.1), it is stated that :

The size of the headline and the footline is determined as follows: Their width is always the paper width. Their height is determined by tentatively typesetting the headline and the footline right after the \begin{document} command. The head of the headline and the footline at that point is frozen and will be used throughout the whole document, even if the headline and footline vary in height later on (which they should not).

So the first remark with respect to your objective is : you should not attempt to modify the footline height throughout the document.

After a quick modification of your document to show some contrast, you can actually see that beamer does exactly what the documentation states.

% arara: lwpdflatex
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
\setbeamercolor{footlinecolor}{fg=white,bg=blue}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{%
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=30ex,dp=1ex]{footlinecolor}%
FirstFoot%
\end{beamercolorbox}%
}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{FirstSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{%
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=3ex,dp=1ex]{footlinecolor}%
SecondFoot%
\end{beamercolorbox}%
}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{SecondSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\end{document}

First slide : the expected height is computed and frozen

Seventh slide : the new height is activated but the rest remains frozen as expected

In conclusion, what beamer does is actually an update of the footline itself, but the top of the footline box is locked through the document, leaving the impression that it does not account for any modification.

answered Oct 07 '20 at 10:41

BambOo

8,801
2
20
47

2

To the person who downvoted, is there a specific reason why ? – BambOo Oct 07 '20 at 11:19
I don't know the reason...but I have given to you +1 for your effort. – Sebastiano Oct 07 '20 at 12:14
@Sebastiano, thanks, it's not much, but it's honest work ^^. Surprisingly, this is the first time it happends to me... – BambOo Oct 07 '20 at 13:05
1

@BambOo Didn't downvote you but gave +1 for the effort as well. But it's not my favorite answer, sorry, as it does not provide a method HOW I would change the footline. Given the accepted answer I ten to consider it a design flaw of beamer that the recalculation is not done automatically. – Nobody-Knows-I-am-a-Dog Oct 07 '20 at 13:40
1

@Nobody-Knows-I-am-a-Dog, thanks. I can understand that you prefer the ohter solution. It is quite common to miss an existing answer due to mismatching keywords here. I am unsure wether you should post the additional information as an answer though. – BambOo Oct 07 '20 at 13:47
@BambOo I enlarged the solution now with a MWE just to make sure that others also get the solution when they end up here with a similar problem. – Nobody-Knows-I-am-a-Dog Oct 07 '20 at 14:00
@BambOo There is always the first time...:-). You think to me...that happen sometimes...all the best. – Sebastiano Oct 07 '20 at 15:38
@BambOo: Can I give you the bounty and at the same time avoid that the answer gets 50 points? And if yes, how would I do that? Your contribution helped me to find the answer but I think your answer is not the correct one. I am not familiar with this bounty thing here as I used it for the first time... – Nobody-Knows-I-am-a-Dog Oct 11 '20 at 10:53
1

@Nobody-Knows-I-am-a-Dog Frankly, I do not know. And you are not at all obliged to give me the bounty. If you deemed my answer helpful, just upvote it if not already, that's largely enough to me :) – BambOo Oct 11 '20 at 11:01

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 28 '23 at 12:47

1

With the current beamer development version, beamer now calculates the head- and footheight at the start of every frame. This should be included in beamer v3.70 (or newer).

answered Mar 28 '23 at 12:47

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

158,329

Nobody-Knows-I-am-a-Dog · Answer 3 · 2020-10-07T13:58:49.220

The answer already was there in stackexchange, I just did not have the right search word. The problem seems to be the lack of a recalculation of the height of the footline.

Problem with \setbeamertemplate{footline} when using \ifthenelse inside

https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/78345/196228

https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/105753/196228

Having understood the mechanism now, I consider this a bug / lack of feature in beamer.

For a fully working example:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=3ex,dp=1ex]{}% Set to a small value
FirstFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{FirstSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[text line]{%
\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=\paperwidth,ht=30ex,dp=1ex]{}% Set to a larger value
SecondFoot
\end{beamercolorbox}
}
%% and now have the footer size recalculated again
\makeatletter
\beamer@calculateheadfoot
\makeatother
\begin{frame}[allowframebreaks]{SecondSlide}
\lipsum[3-8]
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Beamer not respecting changes in footline height

3 Answers3