[OS X TeX] epstopdf glitch

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jul 12, 2010, at 11:37 AM, Justin C. Walker wrote:

> 
> Thanks!  You tickled a vague memory which turned out to be accurate for a change: I had set the "default script" on my 10.5 system to "Tex+DVI", while on the 10.6 system it was set to "Pdftex".  Typesetting worked after switching to the former.
> 
> Next question (for those of us in the cheap seats): what is the magic that makes this work in the first case?
> 
> And why would one prefer one setting to another in general?  Unless that is way too general a question for a mailing list :-}
> 
> Justin
> 

Howdy,

First... if you are really using an updated MacTeX(TeX Live)-2010 pretest it should still just work unless one of those other problems I mentioned are there.

Second and Third... pdf(la)tex can include jpg, png and pdf but not eps graphics directly while TeX+DVI ((la)tex->dvips->ps2pdf) can include eps graphics but not the other. I like pdflatex because I can use the microtype package (beautiful typesetting of paragraphs) and often have pdf graphics and, by using the epstopdf package (and shell escape in pre TL2010 sysems---automatically loaded in TL2010 with no need for shell escape) it can include eps figures (which get converted to pdf on the fly). However, if you want to easily use pstricks graphics (you've got to use the pdftricks or pst-pdf packages and do special things to be able to use them with pdf(la)tex with extra processing) or other packages that generate PostScript you need go the TeX+DVI way.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)