PDF figures

[Christina Thiele]

Karl Berry writes:
>
>     Does your answer mean you can merge a .pdf image into a .pdf file, if
>     you have Distiller? Not having Distiller, its capabilities are
>     beginning to sound almost magical ;-)
>
> It is not especially magical.  ...

;-)) Sure ;-))

> ...
>
> Ghostscript, which is free software and available on all major
> platforms, has the same capability, usually invoked through the script
> ps2pdf.  Naturally, ps2pdf and Distiller have different bugs, features,
> pros, cons, etc.  See www.ghostscript.com.

I'd better go read that ... sounds like Ghostscript can do more than I
thought (no surprise there, huh?!) and maybe I _can_ deal with .pdf
image files ... never thought that possibility existed. Thanks!

> One common way to use pdf files as images is to use pdflatex to create
> pdf files directly.  Then the standard \includegraphics, etc., commands
> will understand .pdf, and the whole ps->pdf conversion step is omitted.
>
> pdflatex can also directly read .jpg, .png, and all the other usual
> formats -- the only common image format it cannot deal with is,
> ironically enough, .eps.  (Unfortunately, there are basic technical
> issues involved which make it impossible.)

The problem I encountered when trying out pdflatex was that PSTricks
is incompatible with it ... and I use PStricks here and there
throughout my files for different projects ;-(

> I don't know if Y&Y TeX has pdf(la)tex, so I don't know if this helps,
> just thought I'd mention it.

Y&YTeX does not. If I recall correctly, pdf was still relatively new,
and since there were ways to get there via Distiller + Y&YTeX ps
output, there was no real urgency to develop a Y&YTeX pdf(La)TeX. But
I'm pretty hazy on the details ... it's somewhere in old mail, I'm
sure.

> karl
>

Ch.