[texhax] Using *.eps files with Latex

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:40:13 +0200 schrieb Martin Heller:

> Robert Wilson wrote:
>> This is one of my least favorite things about LaTeX. If you're using 
>> pdftex to compile, you can use (virtually) any image type (png, jpg, 
>> etc.) in your documents, but NOT eps. If you use the latex command in 
>> concert with dvips or dvi2pdf, you can use eps, but nothing else. I've 
>> never heard of anyone offering a solution supporting both eps and jpg 
>> file types (someone please prove me wrong!).
> 
> LaTeX -> dvipdfmx
> 
> will let you include eps, jpg, png and pdf in the same document if you 
> load the graphicx package with the dvipdfmx driver.
> 
> \usepackage[dvipdfmx]{graphicx}

eps graphics can contain complicated postscript code. You can't
embed them "as is" in a pdf, the pdf-viewer would not be able to
show them. You must "simplify" them with a postscript interpreter
first. 

Neither dvipdfmx nor pdftex contain such a postscript interpreter.
But both are able to call external applications to do the
conversion.

With pdftex you can use epstopdf or auto-pst-pdf, dvipdfmx use in
miktex e.g. the miktex ghostscript as you can see in dvipdfmx.cfg:


%% Use MiKTeX Ghostscript:
D  "mgs.exe -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sPAPERSIZE=a0 -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false
-dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dAutoFilterColorImages=false
-dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode -dUseFlateCompression=true
-sOutputFile=\"%o\" \"%i\" -c quit"

The main problem which the on-the-fly conversion of dvipdfmx is that
it done at each compilation and that you have less controll on the
quality. 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer