From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 10 14:57:35 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 50AE516A4B3 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 2003 14:57:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scaup.mail.pas.earthlink.net (scaup.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.49]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7988443F75 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 2003 14:57:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tyson@stanfordalumni.org) Received: from washdc3-ar5-4-64-186-243.washdc3.elnk.dsl.genuity.net ([4.64.186.243] helo=grape.home) by scaup.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 1A85GN-0006XI-00; Fri, 10 Oct 2003 14:57:31 -0700 From: Don Tyson To: "William O'Higgins" In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 10 Oct 2003 08:31:41 EDT." <20031010123141.GA1925@sillyrabbi.dyndns.org> Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 17:57:30 -0400 Message-Id: cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: writing pdfs X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 21:57:35 -0000 [snipped] > I had some thoughts about generating PDFs, but I was hoping for advice > about which tools to use. Should I just learn how to mark up a text > page manually (I write HTML almost as quickly as plain text)? Should I > learn TeX or some variant and translate it? I hear that PHP has some > excellent PDF-generation tools; should I write up a command-line > interpreter myself? Any suggestions would be appreciated. If you can write HTML almost as quickly as plain text you will have absolutely no problem learning LaTeX markup. IMHO the result is so superior to HTML output that they're not even in the same league, but I'm no html expert. The only thing I would add to the excellent replies is that no one seems to have mentioned the dvipdfm utility, part of the teTeX package, which generates pdf directly from your .dvi file; no need to convert ps to pdf. I've never had any problem using the Computer Modern fonts. Don Tyson