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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>

<link rel="stylesheet" href="default.css" type="text/css"/>

<title>Epspdf and epspdftk</title>

</head><body>

<h1 class="display">Epspdf and epspdftk</h1>

<p class="display">A multiplatform GUI- and command-line converter
for [e]ps and pdf.</p>

<p class="display"><i>Siep Kroonenberg,<br/><tt>siepo at cybercomm
dot nl</tt></i></p>

<p><a href="http://tex.aanhet.net/epspdf/">Current online version of
this page</a></p>

<h2>Table of Contents</h2>

<ul>
<li><a href="#features">Features</a></li>
<li><a href="#prerequisites">Prerequisites</a></li>
<li><a href="#install">Installation</a></li>
<li><a href="#preview">Preview programs</a></li>
<li><a href="#files">Files</a></li>
<li><a href="#releases">Releases</a></li>
<li><a href="epspdf_UG.html">User Guide</a></li>
</ul>

<h2><a name="features"/>Features</h2>

<ul>
<li>Distiller</li>
<li>Works both for documents and for graphics</li>
<li>Single-page selection</li>
<li>Also converts from pdf back to PostScript and eps</li>
<li>Removal of preview headers from eps files</li>
<li>Cropping extra whitespace</li>
<li>Grayscaling (sometimes)</li>
<li>GUI- and command-line version</li>
<li>GUI-configurable preferences</li>
<li>Multiplatform: works unchanged on Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS
X</li>
<li>Support for TeX Live</li>
</ul>

<p>Epspdf has been created with TeX users in mind. For them, eps and
pdf are the preferred graphics formats.</p>

<p>Ghostscript can convert PostScript to pdf. However, few people
are prepared to deal with the ghostscript command-line. Several
command-line utilities try to help out, e.g. epstopdf, a2ping, and
the convert utility from ImageMagick. But for most users this is
still not good enough.</p>

<p>Epspdftk adds a GUI, with buttons to select options and with
dialogs for opening and saving files.</p>

<p>A lot more can be done if you can round-trip between PostScript
and pdf. Although Ghostscript can go from pdf to PostScript, pdftops
does a much better job. This opens several new possibilities:
grayscaling and computing a better boundingbox for either eps- or pdf
graphics, and page selection from multipage PostScript- and pdf
documents. Epspdf will use pdftops if it can find it, and silently
does whatever back-and-forth conversions are necessary.</p>

<p>The command-line program epspdf is written in Ruby. Epspdftk,
its GUI companion, in Ruby/Tk.</p>

<p>Starting with the 2008 edition, epspdf is included in TeX Live as
an optional package, complete with wrapper scripts epspdf and
epspdftk which can be called from the command-line without further
ado.</p>

<h2><a name="prerequisites"/>Prerequisites</h2>

<p>These are the required and optional prerequisites:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ghostscript</li>
<li>pdftops from the xpdf suite, strongly recommended for better
  pdf to PostScript conversions</li>
<li>Ruby 1.8.<i>x</i></li>
<li>Tcl/Tk is only required for the GUI interface. Only version 8.4
  has been tested.</li>
<li>Optional: viewers for PostScript and pdf</li>
</ul>

<p>You may not have to install all of these yourself.</p>

<h3>Linux</h3>

<p>On a current Linux distribution you can almost certainly install
everything from your distribution's package repositories. You may
have to install Ruby's Tk bindings, in addition to Ruby and Tcl/Tk
themselves. The name of such a package might be
e.g. libtcltk-ruby. As to PostScript- and pdf viewers: epspdf tests
for several popular viewers, but the configuration screen also lets
you specify viewers manually.</p>

<h3>Mac OS X (Tiger and later)</h3>

<p>Ruby and Tcl/Tk are already part of the operating
system. Ghostscript is included in MacTeX, but is also available via
e.g. MacPorts. You can get pdftops from MacPorts as part of either
Poppler or xpdf. Another source is <a
href="http://users.phg-online.de/tk/MOSXS/">http://users.phg-online.de/tk/MOSXS/</a>.</p>

<p>If you want to compile xpdf it yourself, which is not hard, you
can ignore warnings about X, Motif or FreeType not being found since
these missing libraries won't affect the compilation of pdftops.</p>

<h3>Windows (Windows 2000 and later)</h3>

<dl>

<dt>If you use the TeXLive package (2008 or later):</dt> <dd>Epspdf
and epspdftk will use Ghostscript and pdftops built into TeX
Live. You still need to download and install Ruby and optionally
Tcl/Tk.</dd>

<dt>If you install from the setup program:</dt> <dd>This package
includes a subset of Ruby/Tk, but you have to provide Ghostscript
and pdftops yourself.</dd>

<dt>If you use the zipfile:</dt> <dd>In this case, you have to
provide everything yourself.</dd>

</dl>


<h3>URLs for the prerequisites</h3>

<dl>

<dt>Ghostscript and GSview (<a
 href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/">http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/</a>)</dt>
 <dd>Contains sources and Windows binaries. The Windows binaries
 come with standard GUI Windows setup programs.</dd>

<dt>XPDF (<a
 href="http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/">http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/</a>)</dt>
 <dd> Sources and Windows binaries. The Windows binaries are
 packaged into a zipfile, which has to be manually unpacked. The
 Configure screen of epspdftk lets you browse for the chosen
 location. You have to do this only once. </dd>

<dt>XPDF, Mac OS X binaries (<a
  href="http://users.phg-online.de/tk/MOSXS/">http://users.phg-online.de/tk/MOSXS/</a>)</dt>
  <dd>These are universal binaries.</dd>

<dt>TeX Live (<a
  href="http://www.tug.org/texlive/">http://www.tug.org/texlive/</a>)</dt>
  <dd>TeX Live 2008 includes epspdf as an optional install. For
  Windows, this version doesn't require external copies of pdftops
  or Ghostscript.</dd>

<dt>MacTeX (<a
  href="http://www.tug.org/mactex/">http://www.tug.org/mactex/</a>)</dt>
  <dd>MacTeX is based on TeX Live. Its set of add-ons includes
  Ghostscript, and can be downloaded separately.</dd>

<dt>The MacPorts Project (<a
  href="http://www.macports.org/">http://www.macports.org/</a>)</dt>
  <dd>MacTeX has Poppler- and xpdf packages either of which include
  pdftops.</dd>

<dt>Ruby one-click installer fro Windows (<a
  href="http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyinstaller/">
  http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyinstaller/</a>)</dt> <dd>Current
  versions (1.8.4 and later) require Tcl/Tk to be separately
  installed.</dd>

<dt>Old releases of Ruby one-click installer (<a
  href="http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167">
  http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167</a>)</dt> <dd>Versions
  prior to 1.8.4 include Tcl/Tk.</dd>

<dt>Ruby source code (<a
  href="http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/">http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/</a>)</dt><dd>For
  those people who prefer to roll their own...</dd>

<dt>ActiveTcl from ActiveState (<a
  href="http://activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/">
  http://activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/</a></dt> <dd> Get
  version 8.4, not 8.5.</dd>

</dl>


<h2><a name="install"/>Installation</h2>

<p>First make sure that the prerequisites are met. Then:</p>

<h3>TeX Live 2008</h3>

<p>Use TeX Live's package manager tlmgr for installation.</p>

<h3>Windows setup program</h3>

<p>Download the <a href="epspdf.0.3.0.exe">epspdftk setup
program.</a> You can run it in the usual way, by double-clicking. The
setup program will create entries in your start menu for epspdftk
and for the user manual.</p>

<h3>Windows zipfile</h3>

<p>Download the <a href="epspdf.0.3.0.zip">epspdf zip file</a>,
unpack it somewhere and create a shortcut for epspdftk.rbw. If you
plan to use the command-line version, put a batchfile in a directory
on your path with the line</p>

<pre>
"&lt;path_to_ruby.exe>" "&lt;path_to_epspdf.rb>" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
</pre>

<p>Epspdf[tk] has been tested with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.</p>

<h3>Unix/Linux</h3>

<p>Download the <a href="epspdf.0.3.0.tgz">tar.gz archive</a> and
unpack it in some directory. All files should be in the same
directory; that is how they find each other. If you plan to use
epspdf.rb from the command-line, then create a shell script
<tt>epspdf</tt> such as</p>

<pre>
#!/bin/sh
&lt;path_to_epspdf>/epspdf.rb $*
</pre>

<p>and put it somewhere on your path.</p>

<p>You can do the same for epspdftk. The first command-line
parameter will be interpreted as startup directory for the file
browser.</p>

<h3>Mac OS X</h3>

<p>Install as for Unix/Linux. Here, too, all files should be in the
same directory.</p>

<p>You can try to start epspdftk.rb from the dock or by
doubleclicking. If that doesn't work out, give the <a
href="epspdf_app.0.2.01.zip">epspdf.app</a> applet a try. After
unpacking, move the file <tt>epspdf.app</tt> to the same directory
as the .rb files. The zipfile also includes this file in text format
(<tt>epspdf.applescript</tt>).</p>

<p>Epspdf mostly duplicates functionality of Preview. But having an
alternate conversion engine means that you can have another shot at
problem files.</p>

<h2><a name="preview"/>Preview programs</h2>

<h3>Windows</h3>

<p>Epspdftk will use the default Windows viewers for PostScript and
pdf. If you have TeX Live 2008 or later then you can assign &lt;TeX
Live root>\bin\win32\psv.bat as previewer for .ps- and .eps
files.</p>

<h3>Unix/Linux</h3>

<p>Supported PostScript viewers include evince, gv, ggv and
kghostview. These are also listed as pdf viewers. Additional pdf
viewers are xpdf, gpdf and acroread/Adobe Reader. You can also
specify a previewer manually in the configuration screen; see the
user guide, under <a href="epspdf_UG.html#configure">"The
configuration screen".</a>.</p>

<h3>Mac OS X</h3>

<p>Epspdftk will always use Preview as viewer under OS X.</p>

<h2><a name="files"/>Files</h2>

<ul>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.3.0.tgz">epspdf.0.3.0.tgz</a> preferred for Unix
and Mac OS X</li>

<li><a href="epspdf.0.3.0.zip">epspdf.0.3.0.zip</a> preferred for
Windows</li>

<li><a href="epspdf.0.3.0.exe">epspdf.0.3.0.exe</a> Windows setup
  program, including Ruby/Tk subset</li>

<li><a href="epspdf_app.0.2.01.zip">epspdf_app.0.2.01.zip</a> Mac OS X
applet for starting epspdftk.rb</li>
</ul>

<h3>Older releases</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.12.tgz">epspdf.0.2.12.tgz</a> for Unix
and Mac OS X</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.12.zip">epspdf.0.2.12.zip</a> for
Windows</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.12.exe">epspdf.0.2.12.exe</a> Windows setup
  program</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.11.tgz">epspdf.0.2.11.tgz</a> for Unix
and Mac OS X</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.11.zip">epspdf.0.2.11.zip</a> for
Windows</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.11.exe">epspdf.0.2.11.exe</a> Windows setup
  program</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.01.tgz">epspdf.0.2.01.tgz</a> for Unix
 and Mac OS X</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.01.zip">epspdf.0.2.01.zip</a> for
 Windows</li>
<li><a href="epspdf.0.2.exe">epspdf.0.2.exe</a>, Windows setup
 program</li>
</ul>

<h2><a name="releases"/>Releases</h2>

<dl> <dt>0.3.0</dt><dd>Current version. Under Windows, now
recognizes whether it is embedded in TeX Live 2008 and then uses
ghostscript/pdftops from TeX Live. Also added TeX Live wrapper
scripts. Uninstaller for Windows setup program. Bug fixes: now
accepts non-numerical version strings for pdftops. No longer checks
for viewers under Mac OS X.</dd>

<dt>0.2.12</dt><dd>Bug fixes: log rotation now
works. Under Windows, sometimes boundingboxes couldn't be
calculated. This was caused by double quotes within backquotes. This
is now avoided by using short filenames within backquotes. Minor
changes in user guide.</dd>

<dt>0.2.11</dt><dd> Minor fixes. Changes in documentation.</dd>

<dt>0.2.10</dt><dd>A computed boundingbox is now expanded by one
point in all directions. This should prevent too-tight
cropping. There is no interface for changing this amount; it can
only be changed by hand-editing the bb_spread
option in the .epspdfrc file or in the HKCU\software\epspdf registry
key.</dd> <dd>The File Open dialog remembers the last directory
visited (between calls, not between program
sessions).</dd><dd>Changes in documentation.</dd>

<dt>0.2.01</dt><dd>Fixes to the Applescript applet epspdf.app for
starting up epspdftk under Mac OS X. It picks up the terminal search
path and no longer requires correct settings in
$HOME/.MacOSX/environment.plist. Epspdf.app is now
packaged separately, under Mac OS
X, and now has an intact resource fork. It has been removed from the
other archives.</dd>

<dt>0.2</dt><dd>Original release</dd>
</dl>

<hr/>

<p class="fineprint">Last revised: July 27, 2008</p>
</body></html>