[OS X TeX] Distiller

[Maarten Sneep]

On 28 Jan 2006, at 21:59, Peter Dyballa wrote:

> pstopdf and the Ghostscript tools convert EPS too, but they do not  
> honour the bounding box of the EPS image, they work on sheets of  
> paper (the image size is not changed, but the graphics size becomes  
> the paper size). epstopdf saves the bounding box information, but  
> cannot handle every EPS file (using ps2pdf and then pdfcrop might  
> work on these EPS files).

I'm sorry Peter, but that is incorrect.

The Apple pstopdf respects the bounding box and other papersize  
metainformation in ps and eps files. It also knows about the fonts in  
the system, but knows nothing about computer modern or any of the  
other TeX fonts. The engine that is used is actually the Adobe  
distiller which Apple licensed. As far as compatible with most  
PostScript and PDF, I think there is no software out there that beats  
this tool. As far as speed: everything does, and ghostscript is  
pretty good.

The plain ghostscript as wrapped in ps2pdf expects ps (not eps) and  
as such it doesn't respect the bounding box comments. It knows  
nothing about system fonts, but can find computer modern and other  
TeX fonts.

If you need the bounding box respected _and_ access to TeX fonts, you  
need epstopdf, unless the eps specifies the bounding box at the end  
of the file. Then you need to jump through hoops to get the  
conversion correct (I would advise to avoid tools that produce such  
output if possible).

Maarten
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