scribe — A Minimalist LaTeX Document Class and Beamer Theme

Edit: Take a look at the discussion in the LaTeX subreddit.

I just released scribe, a minimalist, opinionated LaTeX document class and matching Beamer theme for academic technical writing and presentations. It is designed around a single goal: stay out of the way and let the content breathe.

What it gives you

The class is a drop-in replacement for the standard article class and supports all of its options, so there is nothing new to learn at the document level. On top of that it adds a handful of things I reach for in every paper:

• Callout boxes — info, warn, tip, note out of the box, plus inline variants. Define your own with \scribedefinebox{name}{color}.
• Theorem-like boxes — numbered, referenceable environments for theorems, definitions, lemmas, corollaries, propositions, examples, and remarks. They share one counter that restarts each section. Define your own with \scribedefinetheorem{name}{Heading}{color}.
• Named inline comments — define per-author comment commands with a color, toggle them all off with a single flag for the final submission.
• Compact numeric citations — ranges like [1–3, 5], sorted by order of first appearance.
• Optional line numbers — placed in the outer margin of each column, even across page breaks in two-column layouts.
• Typography — Libertine for body text, Inconsolata for code.

Beamer theme

beamerthemescribe brings the same identity to slides: same fonts, same MidnightBlue accent, same named-comment system, and the signature \scribedivider ornament. One \usetheme{scribe} and your slides match your paper.

Getting started

Drop scribe.cls (or beamerthemescribe.sty) into your project folder and you are done — no package manager, no install step. A minimal document looks like this:

\documentclass[lineno, twocolumn]{scribe}

\scribesetrightmark{Federico Bruzzone}
\scribedefinecomment{fb}{orange}

\title{\textbf{My Paper}}
\author{Federico Bruzzone}
\date{June 2026}

\begin{document}
\twocolumn[\maketitle \begin{abstract}...\end{abstract}]
\input{sects/introduction}
\bibliography{local}
\end{document}

Full examples for both the paper class and the Beamer theme are in the repository. Feedback and contributions are welcome.