NIU Department of Mathematical Sciences

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Generating PDF Files

Adobe Systems Inc. created the `Portable Document Format' in an effort to extend PostScript. PDF viewers are freely available (in particular, the Adobe Acrobat Reader) and often installed as `helper applications' along with Web browsers; this makes PDF a good choice for distributing high-quality typography on the Web.

The simple way to generate a PDF file on our workstations:

1. create the PostScript version, e.g. by printing the document to a file using the PostScript driver; for LaTeX files this is done with dvips file.dvi -o
2. run the command ps2pdf file.ps
3. view the result with acroread file.pdf

If the LaTeX file does not include PostScript graphics, then all you need to do is run pdflatex file.tex, which will generate a PDF file instead of a DVI file.

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