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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!DOCTYPE html
   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.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>

<div id="pagehead">

<h1>Epspdf and epspdftk</h1>

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

<p><i>Siep Kroonenberg,<br/><tt>siepo at cybercomm
dot nl</tt></i></p>

</div>

<p id="logo"><img src="images/epspdf.png" alt=""/></p>

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

<p><a href="http://tex.aanhet.net/epspdf/legacy.html">Legacy
Ruby-based versions</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="#files">Files</a></li>
<li><a href="#releases">Releases</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</li>
<li>GUI- and command-line version</li>
<li>GUI-configurable preferences</li>
<li>Multiplatform: works unchanged on Windows and Unix/Linux</li>
<li>Support for TeX Live and MiKTeX</li>
</ul>

<p>Epspdf has been created with TeX in mind. For TeX and its
derivatives, 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 many users simply want a
GUI.</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 with multistep conversions: grayscaling,
page selection, computing a tight boundingbox. People who depend on
PSTricks will appreciate the option to go from pdf to
PostScript.</p>

<p>Where it makes sense, epspdf uses additional software for a
better outcome.</p>

<p>The command-line program epspdf is written in texlua, which is
already part of recent versions of MikTeX and TeX Live. Versions <a
href="http://tex.aanhet.net/epspdf/legacy.html">prior to 0.6</a>
were written in Ruby. Epspdftk, its GUI companion, is written in in
Tcl/Tk.</p>

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

<p>There is also a third-party LaTeX package epspdfconversion which
  uses epspdf for on-the-fly conversion of eps graphics to pdf, with
  options to control grayscaling and boundingbox generation. See
  CTAN or your TeX distribution.</p>

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

<p>These are the required and optional prerequisites, which will be
checked for when epspdf starts:</p>
<ul>

<li>A recent TeX installation, either <a
  href="http://www.tug.org/texlive/">TeX Live</a> or <a
  href="http://miktex.org/">MikTeX</a>. If this is not an option,
  get a <a href="http://tex.aanhet.net/epspdf/legacy.html">legacy
  version</a> of epspdf instead.</li>

<li><a href="http://ghostscript.com">Ghostscript</a></li>

<li>Optional: pdftops from the <a
 href="http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/">xpdf suite</a> or from the <a
 href="http://poppler.freedesktop.org/">Poppler
 utilities</a>. Pdftops may do a better job of preserving scalable
 fonts when converting from pdf to ps.</li>

<li><a href="http://www.tcl.tk/">Tcl/Tk</a> for the GUI
  interface. Versions 8.4 and 8.5 have been tested. A single-file <a
  href="http://wiki.tcl.tk/52">TclKit</a> runtime is
  sufficient. Recent <a
  href="http://www.patthoyts.tk/tclkit/win32-ix86/">Windows
  precompiled tclkit binaries</a> are available.</li>

<li>Optional: viewers for PostScript and pdf</li>

</ul>

<p>On Windows, both MikTeX and TeX Live already include a copy of
Ghostscript. TeX Live for Windows also includes pdftops.</p>

<p>If you have MiKTeX and a copy of pdftops.exe, then you can point
epspdf to this file from within the GUI. You need to do this only
once.</p>

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

<p>If you have a sufficiently recent standalone TeX Live, just
   install the package. Otherwise:</p>

<h3>Unix/Linux</h3>

<p>Unpack the archive somewhere and create symlinks to epspdf.tlu
   and epspdftk.tcl in a directory on your searchpath.</p>

<h3>Windows setup program</h3>

<p>This is a conventional Windows installer. If it does not find
texlua.exe on the searchpath then it gives a warning and a chance to
abort. It creates a shortcut to the epspdftk GUI and it also creates
an uninstaller.</p>

<p>It installs epspdftk in the form of a so-called
<em>starpack</em>, which
consists of the epspdftk script and a Tcl/Tk runtime, wrapped into
a single file. The command-line script epspdf.tlu remains a separate
file.</p>

<p>This installer has been created with <a
href="http://nsis.sourceforge.net/">NSIS</a>.</p>

<h3>Windows zipfile</h3>

<p>Download the epspdf zip file, unpack it somewhere and create a
batchfile epspdf.bat such as</p>

<pre>
texlua "&lt;path_to_epspdf.tlu&gt;" %*
</pre>

<p>for epspdf.tlu, and a batchfile epspdftk.bat</p>

<pre>
wish85 "&lt;path_to_epspdftk.tcl&gt;" %1
</pre>

<p>for epspdftk.tcl. The wish executable might also be named
  wish[.exe] or wish84[.exe]. The first command-line parameter will
  be interpreted as startup directory for the file browser. Make
  sure that wish85 and these batchfiles are on your searchpath.</p>

<p>Epspdf[tk] has been tested with Windows XP, Windows 7 and
Windows 8.</p>

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

<ul>

  <li><a href="epspdf.0.6.03.tgz">epspdf.0.6.0.tgz</a> preferred for Unix
and Mac OS X</li>

<li><a href="epspdf.0.6.0.zip">epspdf.0.6.0.zip</a> preferred for
Windows if you don't want to use the installer below</li>

<li><a href="epspdf.0.6.0.exe">epspdf.0.6.0.exe</a> Windows setup
  program which installs epspdf with a buit-in Tcl/Tk runtime.</li>

</ul>

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

<ul>

<li>0.6.0 Current version. Command-line component
rewritten in texlua.</li>

<li><a href="http://tex.aanhet.net/epspdf/legacy.html">Legacy
Ruby-based versions</a></li>

</ul>

<hr/>

<p class="fineprint">Last revised: February 7, 2013</p>
</body></html>