Re: Epstopdf and Lucida fonts in labels

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

> My point was that where you now apparently go through a complex bit
> with mogrify cropping A4 or letter sized pages generated by dvips,
> you can just use *only* dvips to get the same effect, by using it's
> -E commandline (it makes dvips create pages that are the exactly the
> size of the 'bounding box' of the stuff on the DVI page).

Yes, but it cannot be converted to PNG using convert.  At least it
couldn't the last time I tried.  I also believe that it can't be
converted to PDF using `ps2pdf'.  I think I tried this, too, but it
would be worth double-checking.

> So you go through these steps
>
>   mp->tex->dvi->ps (pstopdf optional, dvi unwanted)

Yes.  I wouldn't say that the dvi file was unwanted, though.
It might be useful for debugging purposes.  If someone wants PDF, I
suppose `pdftex' would do the trick.  I don't know how EPS files are
included when using `pdftex'.  In general, I prefer to use Knuth's own
software (and John Hobby's MP, of course), rather than similar software
written by others.  For example, I prefer to use CWEB rather than any of
the other literate programming tools and plain TeX rather than LaTeX.
Again, I'm not trying to impose my views on others, but I do feel that
it's a point of view that new users of TeX, MF, MP, etc., often don't
hear.

>
> mptopdf does
>
>   mp->tex->pdf->ps (pdf unwanted)
>
> both are fine.

I agree.  How do you get from pdf to ps?  Does mptopdf do this
itself or does one have to call pdf2ps?

I got the following error when I tried `mptopdf':

mptopdf 3DLDFmp.1
This is pdfeTeX, Version 3.14159-1.00a-pretest-20011114-ojmw-2.1 (Web2C
7.3.7)
(./3DLDFmp.1
Error: mptopdf (file pdftex.cfg): cannot open config file

This looks like a problem with the installation, so it's no criticism of
the technique.  However, it does make me not want to bother pursuing it,
having found another solution.  Just as having to install ImageMagick
might make my solution unattractive to someone else.

> I was just amazed why you wanted/used mogrify.

Since I was forced much against my will to generate PS output in a
standard paper size, I needed a way of cutting off the edges.
`mogrify' did the trick.  In general, I've been very satisfied with
ImageMagick and I'd like to learn to use it better.

Laurence