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Creating PDF (Acrobat) files

We have several methods available for creating PDFs. Which one you choose will depend on the format of the files you wish to convert. The resulting PDF can be read using either evince on Unix, foxit on Windows, or on Macintosh systems using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

If the source file is a DVI:

The dvipdf command takes the DVI output by LaTeX and produces a PDF file. To convert a DVI, simply pass it to dvipdf:

dvipdf filename.dvi

The resulting filename.pdf is saved in the current directory.

If the source file is LaTeX and has no figures:

pdflatex can be used to convert directly from your LaTeX source to PDF if it doesn't include figures. The following command generates filename.pdf from filename.tex:

pdflatex filename.tex

This information may be useful for people who need to use pdflatex.

  1. At the section where you include packages, put

    \ifx\pdftexversion\undefined
    \usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
    \else
    \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
    \usepackage[colorlinks,hyperindex]{hyperref}
    \fi

    By doing this, you will be able to use both latex and pdflatex as your compiler.

  2. You will need to convert all your eps figures into pdf as well. You can do this directly. Such as when in matlab, you can export the figures into pdf format. If you already have eps file, you can do the following

      epstopdf figure.eps
  3. When you insert the figure, use

      \includegraphics{figure}

    Do *not* put ".eps" or ".pdf" here and the compiler will find the correct file.

If the source file is postscript:

There are two ways of generating PDFs from postscript files. The first method can be used on any Unix host but generates fonts which are difficult to read on screen. (The printed output of these PDFs is of high quality, however.) The second method produces PDFs of comparable quality to dvipdf but must be run from a Windows host with Acrobat Distiller.

To convert postscript to PDF on Unix using ps2pdf:

The ps2pdf command produces PDFs from postscript input and is used in the same way as dvipdf:

ps2pdf filename.ps

To convert postscript to PDF on Windows using Acrobat Distiller:

You will first need to transfer the postscript file to a Windows Machine. The most common way to do this is using the ssh file transfer program. On a Windows Machine, select Start->Programs->SSH Secure Shell->Secure File Transfer. Enter the name of your computer and login with your EE department username and password. Find your postscript file and drag it to the desktop.

Then select Start->Programs->Acrobat Distiller. Drag the postscript file you transferred onto the Distiller window. The resulting PDF file will be saved to the same directory as the original postscript file. You can then drag the PDF onto the file transfer window to save it to your home directory.

Please make sure you delete all temporary files, close the file transfer application, and log out when you are done.

For further details, see: