ETD - Create PDF File
From Microsoft Word (Windows or Mac)
Install Adobe Acrobat, for which there is a campus site license. Details on obtaining Acrobat are available at http://www.its.caltech.edu/its/services/sitelicensing/. Acrobat is also installed on all the public workstations in the Library.
- Option 1: Use the PDF button on the Word toolbar. You will be presented with a “Save” dialog box. This may not work for very large documents or for Word Master documents that have subdocuments.
- Option 2: Use File/Print and choose Acrobat Distiller as the printer. You will be presented with a “Save” dialog box.
- Option 3: Via Postscript –
- In Word, choose File/Print. Select a Postscript printer and check the “Print to File” box in the Printer dialog.
- Save the resulting “.prn” file and rename it to “.ps”
- Open Adobe Acrobat Distiller. See “Notes on Job Options in Acrobat Distiller,” below. From the File menu, choose Open and select your .ps file. You will get a “Save” dialog box. Choose a name and location to save the .pdf file.
From TeX and LaTeX
- Option 1: (Unix) Use pdftex or pdflatex. These are included in many distributions of TeX, including the LiveTeX, and teTeX distributions, or they can be obtained from the CTAN archive at http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/.
- Run pdftex or pdflatex as you would run tex or latex. You will get .pdf output rather than .dvi output. There is a helpful user manual and pdftex faq available at http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/.
- pdftex supports inclusion of pictures in PNG, JPEG, TIFF, or PDF format. EPS graphics can be converted to PDF using the eps2pdf utility, Acrobat Distiller, or GhostScript.
- Option 2: (Macintosh) Use TeXtures (commercial software for OS9) or TeXShop (freeware for OSX) utilities.
- Option 3: (Scientific WorkPlace on a PC)
If you have a postscript printer driver installed, you can produce a postscript file from your TeX source. From the Typeset menu, choose Print and check the Print to File box.
Proceed as in the section “From PostScript,” below.
From Adobe Framemaker
From the File menu, choose Save As. Select a file name with a .pdf extension, and a location to save the PDF document. Choose “PDF” in the “Save as type” pulldown and click the Save button. You will be presented with a PDF Setup dialog box. In the Job Options pulldown, choose “Print” and click the Set button.
From PostScript
If you can produce a postscript file from your source file, you can use either Adobe Acrobat or GSView (GhostScript) to convert to PDF.
- Using Acrobat Distiller: See “Notes on Job Options from Acrobat Distiller,” below. From the File menu, choose Open and select your .ps file. You will get a “Save” dialog box. Choose a name and location to save the .pdf file.
- Using GSView: open your .ps file. From the File menu, choose Convert and select the ‘pdfwrite’ device. Click ‘OK’ and specify a name and location to save the .pdf file.
From Paper (the worst case …)
If all else fails, it is possible to scan a paper copy of a thesis into a series of TIFF images and create a PDF from them.
Notes on Job Options in Acrobat Distiller
- There are four default compression settings in the “Job Options” pulldown. From highest to lowest compression, they are Screen, eBook, Print, and Press. We recommend choosing “Print,” which will save color graphics at 300 dpi and will embed all fonts. If you are concerned about file size, you can choose “eBook” which will save graphics at a lower resolution. Do not use the “Screen” option.
- If you are printing to Distiller from Word, you can set the Job Options by clicking on the Properties button in the Print dialog. Select the “Adobe PDF Settings” tab.
- If you are running Distiller to convert a .ps file, the Job Options are in a pulldown at the top of the Distiller window.
- Detailed information on PDF compression options is available at http://library.caltech.edu/etd/CompressionOptionsPDF.pdf.
More Information About PDF
From ITS’s Digital Media Center
http://morel.caltech.edu/classes/pdfs/0612PDF%20for%20Long%20Documents.pdf
If You Need Help
Visit the Caltech ETD web site at http://library.caltech.edu/etd/ or email etd AT library.caltech.edu.
