General Questions:
What are the available programs for making plots (graphics) in Linux?
How do I convert postscript to PDF for NSF proposals (on linux)?
How do I generate pdf output from LaTeX (including figures)?

Examples of graphs generated with xmgrace (postscript files converted to gif files):

* Diagram with shading </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fermispheres.gif>
[input file </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fermispheres.plot> ]

* XY plot with arrows and legend </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fig_vt_ca40.gif>
[input file </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/fig_vt_ca40.plot> ]

* Log-log plot </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/delEoverA-CR.gif>
[input file </~ntg/examples/xmgrace/delEoverA-CR.plot> ]

2001-Sep-09 3:41pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  1. Make sure you have Ghostscript 6.0 or later 
        and tetex-dvips 1.0.6 or later.
  2. Make sure that any figure postscript files use Type 1 fonts only
      (I don't have a conversion plan yet if they don't!).
  3. To convert file.dvi to an appropriate file.ps:
       dvips -Ppdf -j0 -G0 -o file.ps file.dvi
  4  To convert the resulting file.ps (large!) to file.pdf:
       ps2pdf -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.2 \ 
            -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true file.ps file.pdf 

The general NSF instructions are: http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/pdfcreat.htm.
The Linux alternative to using Adobe Distiller on a PC is using the script ps2pdf, which runs Ghostscript to do the conversion from postscript to pdf. It seems to be essential to have up-to-date versions of ps2pdf and Ghostscript (at least 6.0) and tetex-dvips (at least 1.0.6). To check your versions (assuming they were installed from rpm's):

   rpm -q ghostscript
   rpm -q tetex-dvips

Here is what NSF has to say about Ghostscript: <http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/pdfcreat.htm#Ghostscript 6.0 or higher>
The recommended ps2pdf command is:

  ps2pdf -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.2 \ 
      -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true

It is important to configure dvips to use Type 1 fonts. The NSF instructions to do this are http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/pdfcreat.htm#DVIPS.
The basic trick for Linux is to use dvips -Ppdf. So to convert file.dvi to file.ps, use (the -j0 and -G0 options make sure that subsetting and character shifting are turned off):

   dvips -Ppdf -j0 -G0 -o file.ps file.dvi

I've tried this on Linux with Ghostscript 6.0 and it produces pdf readable by the Adobe acroread viewer (AND by xpdf) with what appear to be embeddable type 1 fonts (there is still a discrepancy I'm checking).

Ghostscript 6.0 rpms for Linux are available as ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs601/linux/ghostscript-6.01-1.i386.rpm and ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs601/linux/ghostscript-fonts-6.0-1.noarch.rpm (these links will no doubt be out of date by the time you read this; check http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/ for the latest versions).

The ps2pdf page is http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/doc/Ps2pdf.htm.

2000-Apr-21 3:25pm furnstahl.1@osu.edu

"Effective Scientific Electronic Publishing" at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/publ-tips.html

"Using LaTeX to Create Quality PDF Documents for the World Wide Web" at http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/latx2pdf.html

2000-Mar-30 8:25am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

A good discussion of options is a support page from the University of Minnesota http://www.msi.umn.edu/software/tex/help/pdf.html, which lists three possibilitiies:

 1. LaTeX -> dvips -> ps2pdf  [not recommended]
 2. LaTeX -> dvipdfm  [works with embedded eps figures]
 3. pdflatex [most reliable; requires conversion of [e]ps figures to postscript]

Find out more about dvipdfm at http://gaspra.kettering.edu/dvipdfm/. There are Linux RPM's available on this page.

2001-Oct-19 8:15am furnstahl.1@osu.edu