[OS X TeX] [OT] Manuscript Revision Management etc.

[Ross Moore]

Hello Maarten,

On 21/09/2005, at 7:10 AM, Maarten Sneep wrote:

> On 20 Sep 2005, at 22:47, Jung-Tsung Shen wrote:
>
>
>> How's Metapost compared to (1) postscript and/or (2) Mathematica +
>> Illustrator (post processing)? Is it a personal preference or deeper
>> than that?
>
>> Also, for the journals to which I submit papers, they all  
>> require .eps
>> format for figures. Will metapost produce .eps output natively?

Probably they only say that, because the specifications were written
a long time ago, before PDF was popular and mature.

You ought to be able to rely on a journal production team being
able to convert a PDF image into a .eps file, if that is what
they really *require* now.

>
> The output from metapost is eps, but the fonts can be tricky (since  
> eps does not include fonts, the fonts must be available on the  
> system which further processes the files).

That's a misleading statement.
For .eps you are supposed to include *all* non-standard fonts;
i.e., all except the "standard" 13 or 14, which are supposed
to be available on the local system.

It is possible to include these "standard" ones too.
Indeed, this is advisable now, as the standard has been broken,
with slightly different variants used on different platforms.

> I have some instructions on how to translate a pdf into an eps,  
> without relying on the availability of fonts. These instruction  
> were posted to the list some time ago, but I can post them again if  
> needed. The instructions were tested with the helpdesk of Elsevier,  
> and should work for all Elsevier journals (and presumably other  
> journals as well).

Ghostscript can do this, as can most Adobe (Pro) software.

It used to be part of Mac OS (X and classic) printing to be able to
save as a .eps file. But this is not the case any more with Tiger.
(The "Save PDF as PostScript" option in the Print dialog doesn't
seem to be as rich in variants as under previous OSs.)


>
>> Is .eps for historical reason, or it's indeed better than other
>> format, say, PDF for embedded figures?
>>
>
> eps is understood, or at least included properly, by many  
> applications. That doesn't mean it can't deliver a strong headache  
> - especially with font issues.

Agreed.
This is especially so when including .eps graphics from different  
sources,
each claiming to use a version of Times or Helvetica, say.

>
> pdf includes all fonts, and can be more robust in many ways -  
> including the ability to check that everything is there before  
> starting that expensive printing run.

This is what the journal production staff should be able to use.
It ought to be their job to work around any font problems that may
remain, not the author's.

>
> pdf files can lead to multiple inclusion of (partial) fonts in the  
> output of pdftex. Since metapost output is converted by pdftex, it  
> can take the fonts into account, and this produces smaller and more  
> efficient files. eps files cannot be used by pdftex directly.

pdfTeX tries to combine all occurrences of a base-font into a single  
instance.
For example, if there are graphics which use subsets of CMR10 for  
labels on
diagrams, as well as for the main body font, then it will just be  
loaded once
  --- assuming that it exists within the TeX installation (as of  
course it does!).

On the other hand, if different subsets of Times (or Helvetica) are  
used in the
graphics, then these may not be seen by pdfTeX as being from the same  
font,
so will not be combined.

>
> Maarten

Hope this helps,

     Ross

>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia  2109                            fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
------------------------------------------------------------------------


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