So what's the alternative? There is a free system called LaTeX that you can install on your computer. It gives superior printed results and lets you generate pdf documents, too, also for free. LaTeX also lets you generate PostScript documents. It enjoys widespread use throughout the world. The language supports macros, which means you can create short forms for boilerplate and you can introduce parameterized procedures to simplify many tasks. An enormous number of special-purpose macro packages exist (for free) and are available on the internet.
Since there is a free version of LaTeX for almost every computer in existence, you can be sure that the results will be the same no matter who processes the document. I say "processes the document" because you create a document by mixing mark-up instructions into it and then putting it through the LaTeX engine.
Like a program compiler, LaTeX examines your input file and
creates a
beautifully typeset result.
When you download packages, you can choose a small or a large
installation. Alternatively, you can choose to download all
available packages. This is my own preference. If disk
space or download time are of concern
to you, a subset may suffice. However, as my experience with
LaTeX
has grown, I have found uses for many of the packages that are
available in
a complete download. If you do not download them from the outset,
you
can certainly get them later, one at a time as the need arises.
You can place the repository anywhere you like. If you
don't
like the default location, the wizard will let you change it.
To find out how to write your LaTeX documents, follow the tutorial called The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX2. You can follow the link to get a copy from the Internet or you can find it in your downloaded installation of LaTeX. On my system, it's in the file C:\texmf\doc\guides\lshort-english\lshort.pdf because I elected to have my LaTeX files be stored in the default file directory texmf. If you selected a different location, look there.
You may be tempted to skip the tutorial. I strongly
recommend you
not skip it. I have presented some sample documents below mostly
to
whet your appetite, not to show you how to write LaTeX documents.
For
that, a methodical exploration of its capabilities is necessary.
However,
I do mention how to cause TeXnicCenter to process your documents, and
that's
useful for doing the examples in the tutorial.
When you are ready, there is a large body of information about how
to use LaTeX at http://www.tug.org/begin.html
and http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/index.html.
Here is about the simplest document I know how to create:
Save it to some suitable place using the File menu in TeXnicCenter. To generate the typeset output, select Build, Current File, Build. To view the output, select Build, View Output.
By default, TeXnicCenter is set up to create device independent (dvi) files. Viewing them invokes a program called yap which understands them.
If you have installed Ghostscript and Ghostview, you can created postscript (ps) files by selecting Build, Select Output Profile..., LaTeX=>PS. Viewing them invokes ghostview which, in turn, uses ghostscript.
You can also create portable document format (pdf) files by selecting Build, Select Output Profile..., LaTeX=>PDF. Viewing them invokes Adobe Acrobat Reader, if you have installed it. You can get it from Adobe.
The output of the document in Example 1 can be viewed here in pdf format.
The superior nature of output from LaTeX becomes more apparent
with more
elaborate use of its features. We can improve the previous
document by including the title and the name of the author.
\title{A Sample of a \LaTeX\ Document}
\author{Charles B. Cameron}
\date{February 6, 2003}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
Hello, world!
\end{document}
The empty lines are for readability of the input and have no effect at all on the output, which you can see here in pdf format. Notice that LaTeX worries about the details of formatting which in WordPerfect and Word you must generally worry about yourself. If you omit the date specification, the current date will appear. If you don't want a date to appear, use \date{} in the source file.
The power of LaTeX is considerable. Here is an example using section headers, cross-references, and math. Comments are embedded in the file to explain what the source code does. The results are available in pdf format.
By changing the first line from \documentclass{article} to \documentclass{report} you get a substantially different looking report. I made a couple of other changes, too, replacing the word "section" with the word "chapter" and enclosing the \maketitle command inside the pair \begin{titlepage} and \end{titlepage}.
The modified source code is here:
and here is the output in pdf format.
As you can see, you get a substantially different document with very
little in the way of changes to the source document.
Print to File.
Output your file with the extension .ps (for postscript format).
Then open the file using Ghostscript and convert it to eps format by
using the menu selections File, PS to EPS.
Depending on how exactly you created the graphic, you may be able to
get Ghostscript to compute the so-called bounding box
automatically. If this doesn't work, then you can specify the
bounding box manually. All this entails is that you designate
each of the four edges of the graphic using the mouse.
Ghostscript will then clip
the graphic so that when you include it in a LaTeX document, it will
look right.\begin{figure} \centering
\includegraphics{quadratic.eps} \caption{Here is a graph of a quadratic
equation.} \label{fig:Quadratic}\end{figure}