Below are ways to get from TeX/LaTeX to a pdf file. These approaches
are highly recommended over the use of ps2pdf,
which does a bitmap conversion
(resulting in a huge pdf file that is not searchable by words).
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Just run pdflatex or latex.
For the above, pdflatex assumes a file plot.pdf exists, and latex
assumes a file plot.ps exists
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dvipdfm is currently only available on the Linux computers,
not the Solaris computers.
dvipdfm converts a dvi file directly to pdf, without changes in
the TeX/LaTeX file. The resulting file is searchable.
Different graphics type (eg., jpeg, gif) can be used with the
graphicx package in LaTeX; these cannot be seen with
xdvi but they can be seen from acroread after the dvi file is converted
to pdf.
Sometimes dvipdfm works better than pdflatex (e.g., slides using
the 'seminar' style).
Note that there is a command 'dvipdf' that comes with the latest version
of ghostscript. Like 'ps2pdf', this is not recommended;
this is a bitmap conversion and does not produce a pdf that is
text searchable.
Converting latex: pdflatex without graphics
Just run pdflatex.
Converting latex: pdflatex with graphics
To include figures in latex, the "best" approach is with the graphicx
package:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
or
\documentstyle[graphicx]{article}
Then figures are included with something like
\includegraphics[angle=-90,totalheight=4in]{plot}
\includegraphics[totalheight=4in]{plot}
\includegraphics[totalwidth=6in]{plot}
or
\includegraphics[width=3in, height=4in]{plot}
\includegraphics[width=7.5cm, height=10cm]{plot}
The use of totalheight or totalwidth is preferable in order
that text characters are proportional and not squished in one direction.
Converting figures as ps files to pdf: ps2pdf, epstopdf
To convert a figure from postscript (ps file) to pdf,
use the ps2pdf command. If this fails, then try epstopdf.
This conversion is needed to include graphics for pdflatex.
In pdflatex, graphics types allowed are pdf and png, but not ps.
Converting dvi to pdf: dvipdfm