[pdftex] eps files

[sam tygier]

Thanks for all the replies

Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> The reason is simple: PostScript is a full-blown programming language,
> and PDF is a page markup language that is devoid of programming
> language constructs, like variables, conditionals, loops, and function
> calls.  Think of PDF as a subset of PostScript with no
> programmability, one-character command names, and some extensions like
> a complex binary format (ASCII is possible too, but uncommon), and
> support for transparency and embedded objects (e.g., audio, video, and
> other PDF objects), and inter- and intra-document links (like Web
> URLs).
> 
> If pdflatex were to permit EPS file inclusion, it would have to
> convert them somehow to PDF, a job best left for external programs.
> As evidence of this remark, the TeX and Metafont programs are each
> about 20K lines of Pascal, while the latest ghostscript release is
> almost 800K lines of C.

so basically pdflatex does no format conversion, and so can only embed the files that pdf accepts natively.

i wouldn't suggest that the conversion code would live inside tex/pdftex. it would make more sense for it to automatically call an external program.
 
> The \includegraphics{} command in the LaTeX graphicx package is best
> used by leaving off file extensions: then it can supply .eps or .pdf,
> depending on whether ordinary LaTeX, or PDFLaTeX, is being used.

i know, but its a pain. i have a conference article, which needed to contain eps files (seems that the journals still use plain latex), now i want to include bits into a report, but i prefer pdflatex so that i can have hyperlinks and bitmap files. it is additional effort to go and change all the figures.

Martin Schröder wrote:
> Yes. Where's your patch?
> 
> PS: pdftex is frozen. Your patch should be for luatex.

I had a look at some slides about luatex, format conversion is mentioned. i shall have more a look into that

thanks

sam