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).
- Converting latex: pdflatex without graphics
- Converting latex: pdflatex with graphics
- ps2pdf, epstopdf
- Converting dvi to pdf: dvipdfm
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.
Just run pdflatex or latex. For the above, pdflatex assumes a file plot.pdf exists, and latex assumes a file plot.ps exists
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
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).