[vox-tech] compiling tutorial

[Jonathan Stickel]

Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

>>After a short peruse, it looks good.  I would recommend making a pdf as 
>>well as a ps.  For us folks coming from the land of the GUI (which I 
>>assume includes these high schoolers), we like to use Acrobat Reader. 
>>Use a good dvi->pdf translator, such as dvipdfm.  I like pdf's because 
>>the text is searchable and can be copy-pasted.
>>
>>Jonathan
> 
> 
> good suggestion.  the students are going to be viewing this from my
> teaching webpage -- it's where i dump all my teaching assistant stuff:
> 
> http://www.dirac.org/p/teaching/
> 
> there's a link to "compiling programs" that has postscript and pdf
> versions, along with the tex source plus a makefile.
> 
> btw, you'll get better results generating pdf from latex using
> "pdflatex".  i used to use ps2pdf, but i've always been able to tell
> there's a loss in quality.
> 
> pdflatex is simply wonderful, and you can important all sorts of graphic
> file formats which would be an utter nightmare to use in normal latex.
> much nicer than vanilla latex (norm matloff introduced me to the wonders
> of pdflatex).
> 
> pete

I tried (briefly) using pdflatex awhile back and didn't like it for 
primarily procedural reasons.  I tex in Emacs and use the pulldown menu 
to compile a dvi.  I then look at the dvi with Kdvi, which autoupdates 
if already open.  When it all looks right, _then_ I make a top quality 
pdf with dvipdfm, which can be run through Kdvi's menus.

Anyway, pdflatex skips the dvi step, so I can't quickly see what my 
output looks like.  Also, I use primarily eps graphics, which pdflatex 
does not support.  I do know it supports many other graphics, but with 
cryptic syntax.

Probably should switch the topic if we continue...

I do like your compilation howto.  I just tried out the optimization 
flag; something I wasn't even aware of!

Jonathan