[OS X TeX] graphic conversion

[Ross Moore]

Hello Denis,

On 11/02/2005, at 6:03 PM, Denis Chabot wrote:

> But I sometimes must show my results in a PowerPoint presentation 
> (Keynote is not an option with the

I've always insisted on using Adobe Reader (or Acrobat Reader) as the 
presentation
software, when a Mac isn't available. An alternative is xpdf under 
Linux, esp. for
presentations produced using LaTeX + pdfscreen, TeXpower and/or PPower4.
This is quite common in that portion of the Mathematics community that 
I frequent.

Never have I been forced to use PowerPoint --- thank goodness...


> computer I have at the moment). You must know that Microsoft has not 
> managed to make its apps able to import pdf graphics. Oh they let you 
> insert such files. But some rasterization happens without you being 
> told, and at a low resolution making the plots look very fuzzy, even 
> at screen resolution. They look awful blown on a wall, let me tell 
> you.

   ... for reasons such as this, quite apart from ideological 
considerations.

>
> At least PowerPoint has always imported vector graphics in the pict 
> format. Still does. I also make graphs with KaleidaGraph and vector 
> pict files are easy to produce and import in PowerPoint. They look 
> very crisp, as you'd expect. The look I'd like my pdf plots to have!

Of course, they should have that crisp look.

> So I thought it should be easy to take a vector pdf graphic and turn 
> it into a vector pict file. I was wrong. I tried Preview, Illustrator, 
> Graphic Converter, Intaglio. They all say they can convert pdf to 
> pict. But they all produce a raster pict.

Older versions of Mathematica used to be able to produce
"PICT with embedded PostScript" --- but that was really
like .eps  with a raster PICT preview, just bundled differently.
This gave great quality for printing, but isn't any good to
you as a conversion tool.

>
> Does anybody here know of a way to do this?
>
> I'd also like to go from vector pict to vector pdf to include plots 
> produced with KaleidaGraph into LaTeX documents...

One way would be to "Print to PDF", then crop if necessary.
You mentioned Illustrator, so that would certainly allow you
to open the image, adjust the /MediaBox (or /ArtBox or /CropBox)
and resave as PDF (or .eps and run another converter).

While being rather more tedious than a Drag-&-Drop-style converter,
this at least forces you to look again at each graphic and may
reveal subtle problems of which you were not previously aware.
For anything destined for a publisher, this is a good thing to do.


>
> Thanks
>
> Denis
> p.s. I've complained to Microsoft, so maybe they'll fix this within 
> the next decade

Surely it's more effective to stop using their software,
and encourage colleagues to do the same.



Cheers,

	Ross

>
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Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia                                  fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
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Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
           & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>