PostScript and LaTex/Tex files

[Gail McMillan]

I agree that PDF is the way to go.  At Virginia Tech (Graduate School and
University Libraries), we're using PDF for e-theses and e-dissertations as
well as for e-reserve.  It's pretty wonderful.

The Acrobat Reader is free and it's easy to install and easy to configure
your machine (Mac or PC, in my personal experiences) to automatically open
the Reader whenever you click on a PDF file.
                        Gail Mc

>Keith Engwall wrote:
>>
>> >We're trying to provide links to relevant e-journals for
>> >sci/tech...and there are a number of good ones.  One problem,
>> >however, is that a lot of them post the articles in .ps or LaTex/Tex
>> >format. ( By the way, our browsers in the library run on Windows
>> >boxes).
>>
>> ..
>>
>> >LaTex/TeX is another problem altogether.  We really haven't found any
>> >good windows viewers for this.
>> >
>> >Anyway, with the amount of material out there in these formats, I'm
>> >surprised there aren't any decent helper apps out there for viewing
>> >and printing easily.  Does anyone have any suggestions/experiences?
>>
>> Back when I was the Grad. Assistant at the Math Library at U of IL -
>> Urbana/Champaign, I had to investigate a similar problem with Math
>> e-journals.  The solution we came up with (after a great deal of
>> researching, asking around, etc.) was to provide access to the journals in
>> three formats:
>>
>> DVI (from TeX), for easy printing (and miniscule download time) from
>>X-Windows
>> PS (using dvips on UNIX), for better viewing on X-Windows
>> PDF (using the Acrobat Distiller on the PC) for everyone... not great to
>> look at on the screen, but easy to print on all platforms.
>>
>> Adobe Acrobat Distiller is VERY expensive, and the screen quality of the
>> materials is not fabulous (the font often looks small and distorted on the
>> screen), but will produce great printouts on any platform.  Plus, Acrobat
>> Viewers are freeware (or were, at least).  You can grab a viewer, and judge
>> the ease of printing for yourself.
>>
>> By no means was this a great solution... but it's all we could find at the
>> time.  I wish you luck, and let me know how it turns out.
>>
>> Keith
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Keith Engwall          Just one thing before we talk about computers:
>> Systems Librarian      PCs are just great... PCs are infuriating
>> Briscoe Library        Macs are just great... Macs are infuriating
>> UTHSCSA                Neither one will help you scratch the middle
>> engwall at uthscsa.edu    of your back worth a darn.  Ok, go on...
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I think that converting .ps files into PDF would be the best
>solution. Acrobat Distiller, which does the job, is included in the
>latest (6.0) version of Adobe PageMaker.
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Gail McMillan                         Virginia Tech University Libraries
        Director, Scholarly Communications Project
        Head, Special Collections Department