[OS X TeX] graphic conversion

[Alan Curtis]

On Feb 11, 2005, at 2:03 AM, Denis Chabot wrote:

> Wow, I got many very useful answers to my question about spaces in 
> file names, thank you.
>
> With hope of as much success here is another question. I posted it on 
> the R for Mac list (r-sig-mac at stat.math.ethz.ch) and people have tried 
> to help me but we did not find the ultimate solution yet.
>
> More and more I do my scientific plots with R. The output looks very 
> good and the plots are pdf files cropped to show just the plot 
> (instead of a small plot on a full page like you get in other graphics 
> packages that produce pdf only through "print as pdf").
>
> This is perfect when I produce a LaTeX document.
>
> But I sometimes must show my results in a PowerPoint presentation 
> (Keynote is not an option with the computer I have at the moment). You 
> must know that Microsoft has not managed to make its apps able to 
> import pdf graphics. Oh they let you insert such files. But some 
> rasterization happens without you being told, and at a low resolution 
> making the plots look very fuzzy, even at screen resolution. They look 
> awful blown on a wall, let me tell you.
>
> At least PowerPoint has always imported vector graphics in the pict 
> format. Still does. I also make graphs with KaleidaGraph and vector 
> pict files are easy to produce and import in PowerPoint. They look 
> very crisp, as you'd expect. The look I'd like my pdf plots to have!
>
> So I thought it should be easy to take a vector pdf graphic and turn 
> it into a vector pict file. I was wrong. I tried Preview, Illustrator, 
> Graphic Converter, Intaglio. They all say they can convert pdf to 
> pict. But they all produce a raster pict.
>
> Does anybody here know of a way to do this?
>
>

Most here would advise you not to use PowerPoint but use a TeX based 
presentation package. You do know, of course, that "PowerPoint is Evil" 
(google this phrase to find out why). If, like me, you are sometimes 
required to use PowerPoint, I would suggest converting your pdf'd to 
png's. After much trial and error, I concluded that png import to 
PowerPoint looked the best under most circumstances and is compatible 
with those that want to open and edit the words (but not the png's) in 
Windows. GraphicConverter or ImageMagick (available through 
i-Installer) will do this for you. Alternatively, you could use 
KeyNote, which always looks good with pdf imports (when you can get 
away with it).

Alan


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