PDF relatic topics

Henrik Bengtsson, 2002-2004

Create a PDF document

To generate a PDF file from a tex file:

  ps2pdf foo.ps
  ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=a4 foo.ps  # same, but force papersize A4

The latter forces the output to be in A4, which sometimes is necessary to do.

If you have access to maketex, you can instead to

  maketex -pdf foo.ps
  maketex -pdf -a4 foo.ps  # same, but force papersize A4

If you have a TeX file, just do

  maketex -pdf foo.tex

Note that a postscript file (here foo.ps) is always generated in the case you are running maketex on a TeX file. This is done because the postscript file is almost always wanted.

Convert a PDF to postscript

To convert a PDF document into a postscript file:

  maketex -ps bar.pdf

This generates postscript level 2 documents. Note that the generate postscript file is normally (much) larger than the original pdf file.

If you do not have access to maketex you can let Acrobat Reader convert the file for you:

  acroread -toPostScript myfile.pdf .

which will generate the postscript file myfile.ps in the current directory (hence the .). One can control the convertion in more detail by using more options. See acroread --help for more details.

PDF Forms (FDF) by LaTeX

D. P. Story, Pdfmarks: Links and Forms, Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics, University of Akron, 2004.
http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/lnk_forms.html

Other resources

How to Create PDF from LaTeX by Ki-Joo Kim. "This document describes how to create high quality PDF from LATEX sources and provides some valuable tips. The creation tools are ps2pdf, Adobe distiller, dvipdfm, or pdflatex. It also explains the famous hyperref package for bookmakrs, WWW links, internal links, and more."