Making PDF files from TeX files
Ralph Freese
Revised Apr 6, 1999
The latest release of the
TeXLive CD
from the
TeX User's Group
includes everything needed to produce PDF files from your TeX files
using Type I (scalable) fonts.
Setting up TeX and Adobe Acrobat for your site
In order to set up your site you (or your system administrator) should
(these instructions are geared for a unix setup but should be useful
for all setups)
- Get the TeXLive CD,
which is very modestly priced. This CD was distributed to all
TUG members. The install script contained some errors so you
should:
- Get and install Adobe Acrobat v. 3.0. This is a commercial product
but the price is very reasonable in general and there is even an
academic discount. It is available for most flavors of unix (and
also for macs and pc's).
How to make the PDF files
Suppose you have a paper, paper.tex, which TeX's correctly into
paper.dvi. To make the PDF file do:
- Make a PostScript file paper.ps with
Type I fonts using the command
- Make the PDF file paper.pdf using the Acrobat distiller:
- Delete the file paper.ps and (possibly) move the pdf file to your
html area and add a link to it on your homepage (or papers page).
Additional infomation for LaTeX
LaTeX's symbolic references can be automatically turned into links in
your PDF file by using Sebastian Rahtz's hyperref package. Just
add the line
- \usepackage[pdfmark]{hyerref}
to you LaTeX file. Run TeX on it a few times and make the PDF file
as above. Some fine points:
- The PostScript code added to your dvi file
(via the \special command) for
the pdfmarks will cause xdvi to fail. So omit the
pdfmark option above while you are preparing your paper
and put it in when you are ready to make the PDF file.
- The hyperref also makes Bookmarks for your
PDF file for the sections of your paper. The reader can choose
to have these shown (in a panel on the left side of Acroexch
(or Acroread) by choosing Bookmarks and Page from the View
menu. Using Acrobat Exchange you can modify your PDF file
to have the file open with Bookmarks and Page.
- If you are using commercially licensed fonts such as the excellent
lucida bright family from Y&Y
you need to make sure distill subsets all fonts in order
not to violate the license agreement. You do this with
- distill -maxsubsetpct 99 paper.ps
Also you will need to tell LaTeX to use these fonts. At our
site add the following lines to your LaTeX file:
- \usepackage[LY1]{fontenc}
- \usepackage[LY1,expert]{lucidabr}
To make paper.ps at our site you do
- If paper.ps contains bitmap images such as screen dumps, you should
distill it with options to force higher resolution of the images.
Do something like this:
- distill -colorcompr jpeg:high -colorres 600 paper.ps
- distill -graycompr jpeg:high -grayres 600 paper.ps
