The ltx-talk class is focused on producing (on-screen) presentations, along with support material such as handouts and speaker notes. Content is created in a frame environment, each of which can be divided up into a number of slides (actual output pages). A simple overlay notation is used to specify which material appears on each slide within a frame. The class supports a range of environments to enable complex slide relationships to be constructed.

The appearance of slides is controlled by a template system. Many of the elements of slides can be adjusted by setting simple key-based values in the preamble. More complex changes can be implemented by altering specific, targeted definitions without needing to rewrite entire blocks of code. This allows a variety of visual appearances to be selected for the same content source.

The ltx-talk class has syntax similar to the popular Beamer class, although there are some (deliberate) differences. However, ltx-talk has been implemented to support creation of tagged (accessible) PDF output as a core aim. As such, it is suited to creating output for reuse in other formats, e.g., HTML conversions, without additional steps.