Plotting Linux Workflow

resizing postscript YMMV (your mileage may vary):

• Layout a poster with you favorite software set, like TeX. Try to make your file as close to the final size and aspect ratio as possible. You may also want to include a bit of margin space all the way around, because the plotters have a 3/4 inch margin.
• Resize your postscript file from your original to a larger size. You can see the original size by opening your postscript file with a text editor and looking for the first %%BoundingBox line. We go from HxW (original) to hxw (resized). A popular size is archE, 2592x3456 at 75 DPI.

$ psresize -W1509 -H905 -h3456 -w2592 original.ps >resized.ps

• Convert your postscript file to a PDF with Ghostscript, then Adobe Acrobat Reader for Linux can clean, resize and scale it. This step cleans up ugly/buggy PostScript code.

$ ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=archE resized.ps resized.pdf
$ cat resized.pdf | acroread -toPostScript -size 2592x3456 >final.ps

• Double check your final files with either the `gv` or `acroread` command. This should give you an accurate representation of your final print. The trick is to scale you page size correctly from your original document and then put it through Adobe Acrobat Reader to clean up.

$ gv final.ps

Basically, the final file that you upload should be a single paged PostScript 2 or 3 file, no Encapsulated PostScript, taking into account the actual target page size.

More information is available at PlottingServices.

convert LaTeX to DVI to PS to PDF

$ texi2dvi -o template.dvi template.tex
$ dvips -Ppdf -t letter -G0 -o template.ps template.dvi
$ ps2pdf -dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 -dMaxSubsetPct=100 \
  -dSubsetFont=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true \
  -dAutoFilterColorImages=false -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false \
  -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode \
  -dMonoImageFilter=/FlateEncode template.ps template.pdf
$ xpdf template.pdf