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IPAG Latex Information Page

[General Info] [LaTeX --> PDF] [LaTeX --> HTML] [Other Links]

Disclaimer: This document provides information only on the packages available here at IPAG. The documentation is also specific to the versions installed here.

General Documentation

teTeX: We use the teTeX distribution here (version 1.0). The teTeX manual is available in pdf format
LaTeX This is the complete .html documentation. See also Essential LaTeX++ which introduces some basic LaTeX concepts.
BibTeX: Bibliography generation for LaTeX.
Makeindex: Index generation for LaTeX.
Packages in the Graphics Bundle: This is a good source of information on including graphics in LaTeX documents.
Dvips: This can be used to convert .dvi files to postscript.
Ghostscript(6.00): This is the complete on-line documentation for ghostscript, the postscript/pdf file previewer converter (often accessed through ghostview or gv).
A PDF version of the Ghostscript manual for version 5 is also available.)
See also the Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview page.
Gv: gv is a replacement for ghostview as a graphical user interface to ghostscript. A good configuration file for gv is available. Place this in your home directory and rename it as `.gv'.

If you are one of the SGIs at IPAG the following link points to the local teTeX documentation.

LaTeX to PDF Conversion

There are a number choices here, which start at different places in the LaTeX to postscript process. The easiest option is probably ps2pdf.

Note: The resulting .pdf files can be viewed (and printed) using either acroread, xpdf or gv.

ps2pdf(v 6.00):New! 8th Feb 2000 This work very well!
We now have the latest version of ghostscript (6.00). The script ps2pdf uses gs6.00 and has none of the limitations of the earlier versions. It can be run as:
```
 ps2pdf test.ps test.pdf
```
If you use ps2pdf to convert dvips-created postscript files, you must run dvips as follows:
```
 SGIS: dvips -Ppdf -Z9 test.dvi -o test.ps
Linux: dvips -Pcmz -Z9 test.dvi -o test.ps
```
which will use appropriate fonts and also create some initialization that will be useful for the .pdf generation later.
dvipdfm(0.12.7b). This used to be the best choice, but now try ps2pdf first
This converts a dvi file to an pdf file. If you use psfig macros you need to slightly modify the top of your .tex file.
1. Replace the \usepackage{psfig} command with \usepackage{epsfig}.
2. Replace any \psfigurepath declarations with \graphicspath declarations. The syntax for \graphicspath is slightly different e.g.
```
\includegraphics{{Figs1/}{Figs2/}}
```
The rest should work just as is.
pdfTeX(0.14e). This is only if you are into drastic changes!. Having said this, I have more or less switched to using pdflatex instead of latex for my own work!.

pdfTeX and pdfLaTeX are extensions to TeX and LaTeX and produce a .pdf file as an output instead of a .dvi file. This is the most radical solution of the three and suffers from the fact that one cannot include .eps and .ps files anymore. These must be converted to .pdf format first using a script such as epstopdf e.g.
```
epstopdf -d test.eps
```
which will generate the output file test.pdf. To convert multiple files use the script multiepstopdf. Further do not use the traditional psfig macros but replace these either with the newer \includegraphics{} (from \usepackage{graphicx}) or the epsfig supplied (see above) psfig command. In both cases you need not (should not) specify a suffix for the filename.
When all is done you compile the .tex file using pdflatex e.g.
```
pdflatex test
```
Notes:
1. Use pdftex for plain .tex files.
2. I suggest using gv as a previewer. If you use the suggested configuration file from this link, it has all the functionality of xdvi, such as automatic updates etc. To get better font display enable the `antialias' option under the state menu.

Adding Rich PDF functionality

Hyperref: In all of these cases the hyperref macro package can be extremely useful in generating cross-links etc. The most basic use takes the form:

If you plan to use pdftex, pdflatex include \usepackage[pdftex,colorlinks]{hyperref}.
If you plan to use dvipdfm include \usepackage{dvipdfm,colorlinks}[hyperref].
If you plan to use ps2pdf include \usepackage[hyperref,colorlinks]{hyperref}.

LaTeX to HTML Conversion

TTH(v 2.60): This is good for simple files, especially with relatively simple equations. To translate a file called test.tex try
```
l2h test
```
This is will generate an output file test.html.
Latex2html(v 99.2beta6): This is probably the standard LaTeX to HTML converter. To run it on a file simply type:
```
latex2html test
```
Note: Some of the icons (such as [next], [previous] etc) may not appear on the machine you work on. They will appear just fine when you copy the files on the webserver on noodle. Alternatively (on the SGIs as superuser) run the script latex2htmlseticons to create the necessary links.
Tex4ht (1999-03-26-10-46): This is an alternative to latex2html more complicated cases. See also (this alternative link). To translate a file first include the declaration:
```
\usepackage[html]{tex4ht}
```
Alternatively you can have your document broken into a number of web pages using declarations like:
- \usepackage[html,3,sections+]{tex4ht}. This breaks up the document into sections.
- \usepackage[html,2,sections+]{tex4ht}. This breaks up the document into chapters.
1. Then latex the document three times to make sure that all the links are set. i.e.
```
latex test
latex test
latex test
```
2. Next preprocess the file to generate the base html files using:
```
tex4ht test
```
3. Next generate the graphics (equations and figures) using:
```
t4ht test
```
When you view a file it may be missing a .gif file because of an error in its generation. In that case you can try to regenarate it by hand. A local command idvitogif can be used to do this as follows:

If file test10x.gif is missing (10=number) type:
```
 idvitogif test.idv 11 test10x.gif 1.7 1.4 
```
where the number 11 is one bigger than the original 10. (LaTex counts from 1 and tex4ht from 0 therefore there is an offset of 1 between them.)
The numbers 1.7 and 1.4 are the scaling factors for equations and pictures respectively.

External Links

For help with LaTeX see Tim Love's Text Processing using LaTeX page at Cambridge. This is were I first found out about LaTeX.

See also The LaTeX Catalogue.

The definitive source is the TeX Users Group (TUG) homepage.

This page maintained by Xenios Papademetris

papad@noodle.med.yale.edu

Last updated 8th February 2000.