[OzTeX] eps files not previewing properly

Andrew Trevorrow andrew at trevorrow.com
Sat Jan 15 14:16:51 CET 2005


This is mainly for Ken Pierce but it has some info that might help other
people who are having problems converting eps to pdf.

> I've had some unexpected behavior with eps files in latex documents. The eps files are created on a mac with Adobe illustrator 10.  For an eps file with no mac preview, OzTeX tries to create a temporary pdf file, but fails.  (convert_eps=1).

I tried the test eps file you sent and OzTeX had no problems converting it
to pdf and previewing the result.  The Unix script that OzTeX calls requires
a Ghostscript installation, so check that by starting up Terminal and doing a
which command:

akt% which gs
/usr/local/bin/gs

If gs exists then we'll need more clues.  Go back to OzTeX and type option-d
when the OzTeX window is frontmost.  This will turn on a debugging mode:

*** DEBUG MODE IS ON ***

Now view the dvi page containing the eps file.  With convert_eps set to 1
you should see something like this in the OzTeX window:

*** CONVERTING EPS TO PDF
Command: oz-convert-eps circle.eps /private/tmp/501/TemporaryItems/oz1343-3325443864.pdf
Directory: HD:testdisplay:

Hopefully the output you see will explain what is going wrong.
One possibility might be that you don't have write permission to the
/private/tmp/501/TemporaryItems/ directory, so check that in Terminal:

akt% ls -l /private/tmp/501
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  6 akt  wheel  204 16 Jan 00:01 TemporaryItems

If your permissions look wrong then try using Disk Utility to repair disk
permissions.  Or maybe set convert_eps = 3 so OzTeX creates a pdf file in
the same location as the eps file.  The pdf file is permanent and will be
used by future runs (so much quicker).

> Saving the eps file with unix linebreaks doesn't alter this behavior. But if the file has unix linebreaks, I _can_ use epstopdf or oz-epstopdf directly on the file without error.

I think this must be a red herring.  On my system I had no problems with
your eps file after converting it to use Mac, Unix or DOS linebreaks.

Andrew



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