Viewing and Creating PDF Files

This page is under construction.

PDF files sometimes cause a lot of trouble with viewing them, printing them and creating them. This page aims to introduce you to the range of tools that can be used to handle them - if one tool won't work on your file, perhaps another will.

Web browsers and email clients will launch a PDF viewer when they are instructed to display a PDF file. If this does not work properly, save the file to your home directory so that you can experiment with different PDF viewers. In a web browser you save a file by right-clicking on the link.

Once you have a PDF file in your filespace, there are several ways of viewing or printing it. If you have trouble reading or printing the file with one tool, try another.

Linux command Windows program
evince  
acroread Adobe Reader
FoxitReader Foxit Reader
gv GSView
xpdf  

If you need to create a PDF file, the command ``ps2pdf'' will convert a PostScript file to PDF. The syntax for this command is ``ps2pdf input.ps output.pdf''. Sometimes PDF files created with this command will look a bit fuzzy on screen, but much clearer when printed out. If you're using TeX or LaTeX, it helps to create the PostScript file with ``dvips -Ppdf'', or use "pdftex" to create a PDF file from a TeX/LaTeX file directly.

If the result of ps2pdf isn't good enough, or if you need to convert a Word document, use a Windows machine. To convert a file, open it in the appropriate application and print it to ``Acrobat Distiller''.