Converting PostScript files to PDF (Acrobat Reader) format
There are two methods to convert PostScript files to PDF files.
The first method is to use Adobe's "distill" program, located in the
"acro" locker.
athena% add acro
athena% distill myfile.ps myfile.pdf
This command, however, will only work on Sun SPARCStation workstations.
The second method is to use "ps2pdf" in the "ghostscript" locker.
athena% add ghostscript
athena% ps2pdf myfile.ps myfile.pdf
However, there may be occasions where one or both of these programs do
not produce the desired output. This can result from many things:
unusual fonts in the PostScript document, inline images that are not
correctly handled, differences between the version of the PDF language
and the version of Acrobat Reader. More information on these
limitations can be found using "distill -help" or "man ps2pdf" as
appropriate.
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Special addendum for LaTeX users:
PDF files generated from LaTeX output will, by default, look fine in a
printout but look jagged on the screen. To make a smooth-looking PDF
file from LaTeX, one method is to use pdflatex on your .tex file:
athena% pdflatex filename.tex
This will use postscript versions of the Computer Modern fonts, so
that the text looks good at various resolutions. This also skips the
latex step, so you don't have to generate a .dvi file at all.
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If your latex file includes postscript files (such as in figures),
then pdflatex will not be able to generate a proper pdf file. In this
case, you will need to use dvips and distill:
When distilling "dvips -o" postscript output to pdf format, the fonts
will generally look pixelated and ugly. This is because LaTeX, by
default, uses an assortment of bitmapped fonts. In order to get
nicer-looking pdf output, you can use Type 1 Postscript fonts instead
of the standard bitmap fonts, by doing the following:
athena% latex file.tex
athena% dvips file.dvi -Ppdf
Rather than send the file to the nonexistent printer "pdf", this
creates a .ps file using Type 1 postscript fonts. Then, to create
the pdf file from this ps file:
athena% add acro
athena% distill file.ps
Note that distill is not available on the SGIs at the present time; if
you're logged onto an SGI, you can telnet to athena.dialup.mit.edu to
run distill.
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