Latex Beamer cuts text off

Question

Hi all,

The following simple Latex description does not result in the slide I want it to be.

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Previous Work}
\begin{itemize}
\item [Hummer 1992] - First work in this area was conducted by Hummer
\item [Goldreich et at. 2002] - Theoretical work that focused more on the power    characteristics of embedded systems
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}

The problem is, that the text within the square brackets is cuts off. So it should look like this:

Hummer 1992           - First work in this area was conducted
                        by Hummer
Goldreich et al. 2002 - Theoretical work that focused more on
                        the power 

But it looks like this:

r 1992  - First work in this area was conducted by Hummer
l. 2002 - Theoretical work that focused more on the power 

Any idea how I can sort this out.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The itemize environment is not meant to be used with long 'bullets'. Using the description environment does a better job (which also works in beamer as I checked), but it won't align the names and descriptions as you would like to sketch out.

There's always the tabular for doing exactly what you want.

Answer 2

As progo said, the description environment fits better than itemize. Additionally, you could improve the alignment using the optional parameter of the description environment, specifying the width of the widest label:

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Previous Work}
\begin{description}[Goldreich et at. 2002]
\item [Hummer 1992] First work in this area was conducted by Hummer
\item [Goldreich et at. 2002] Theoretical work that focused more
    on the power characteristics of embedded systems
\end{description}
\end{frame}

Output:

Btw. if you would like to know how to get rid of the "default" beamer warnings have a look at this blog post regarding beamer warnings.