[pdftex] common header for latex files

[Martin Jansche]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Riccardo De Vincenzi wrote:

> I'm a new user and I would be very glad to have some suggestions
> in order to create .dvi (latex), .ps (dvips), .pdf (pdflatex) and
> .html (latex2html) documents using one common header for my .tex
> files, knowing also the best image format (.eps or .png or other).

That depends a lot on exactly what you want to do.  In my experience,
no special treatment is required, provided you use packages that are
aware of pdftex and have appropriate drivers.  For example,
\usepackage{geometry} instead of, say, Vmargin, for setting the paper
size and margins; \usepackage{graphicx} instead of one of the many
other EPS inclusion packages for including graphics files; and
\usepackage{natbib} and the appropriate bibtex styles in conjunction
with hyperref.  You might also want to make sure that you only use
fonts that are available in Postscript Type 1 format.

For me, that's usually enough for creating .ps and .pdf from the same
source file.  (Don't know about creating .html, since the results of
latex to html conversion are usually unacceptable to me.)  If you need
to take different actions for .dvi vs. .pdf output, use Heiko's ifpdf
package.

I'm not sure that there is a single best image format.  If at all
possible, I tend to use MetaPost output, but whether that's an option
for you will depend on the software that created your figures.  Eps is
often reasonable; if you search the list archives, you'll find many
suggestions regarding the conversion of .eps to .pdf.  The important
thing is that you only say \includegraphics{foo} instead of
\includegraphics{foo.eps} (or whatever) in your latex source to keep
the source file generic.

HTH,

- martin