[X-Unix] Converting eps to pdf from commandline

[Stroller]

On 8 Sep 2009, at 19:10, John Harrold wrote:
> ...
> I'm generating some eps files with latex and I need to convert these  
> into
> pdf files.

I'm sorry that this response doesn't directly answer your question,  
but is there a reason you're producing EPS files with LaTeX?

I know different LaTeX distros behave differently - what I remember  
from last time I used a multiple-step process is that I used a command  
to produce .dvi files (??) from the .tex output, then dvips or dvipdf  
[1] to produce a printable file. I see these latter commands appear to  
be provided by Ghostscript; I do my LaTeX work on Linux, so have no  
idea of the situation of that package or those commands on MacOS.

I think my LaTeX distro (texlive) dropped dvi2pdf, but this shouldn't  
be a big deal, as it's easy to convert PS to PDF.

I'm not clear on the difference between PS & EPS files. My experience  
of opening EPS (say, Photoshop / Illustrator) is that they often  
manifest this scaling problem you describe.

Anyway, my advice, if you'll forgive it, is to try to avoid the EPS  
step. I personally just use `rubber` [2], which turns a multiple-step  
process into a single-step one, and saves me having to read a bunch of  
uninteresting output as the .dvi file is generated. I simply run  
`rubber --pdf source.tex` and get a perfect pdf file as a result (in  
fact I have `alias rubber="rubber --pdf"` in my .bashrc, making the  
actual command to type even shorter & more intuitive)

Stroller.


[1] http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/intrepid/man1/dvipdf.1.html
[2] http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~beffara/soft/rubber/