writing pdfs

[Tillman Hodgson]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 03:06:23PM +0200, Alexander Haderer wrote:
> My opinion: yes. Learn the basics of LaTeX and use pdflatex instead of 
> latex to create pdf files directly from your tex source. The "old" way of 
> generating pdf via tex->dvi->ps->pdf via the classic (la)tex commands has 
> the disadvantage that you have to deal with different ps-fontencodings 
> (type 1 / type 3 or Pixelfont vs. Outline font) with the bad sideeffect 
> that your pdfs have crippled and slow display on screen while printing 
> works fine. google is full of messages regarding this topic.

I agree with the recommendation to learn LaTeX. It's probably the best
way to generate PDF output and it's widely used for document generation.

I disagree that one needs to use pdflatex, though. Those side-effects
you mention are trivial to get rid of:

 1. \usepackage{times}      (or palatino or bookman or whatever font
                             package you like)

 2. use something like this in your Makefile:

ps:
        latex some_latex_file.tex
        latex some_latex_file.tex
        dvips -Ppdf -G0 some_latex_file.dvi

pdf:
        latex some_latex_file.tex
        latex some_latex_file.tex
        dvips -Ppdf -G0 some_latex_file.dvi
        ps2pdf some_latex_file.ps

 (running latex twice is for TOC generation, if you don't use a TOC you
  don't need that part).

Voila! Your PDF and PS output will be identical. Quick display outdates
and non-bitmap printing.

-T


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