PDFLaTeX

PDFLaTeX converts your latex file directly to pdf. You run it just like you run the latex command, i.e. to compile "fred.tex":

pdflatex fred 

To view the results, use one of:

• xpdf (type 'r' to update display while developing document)
• gv (double-click right mouse button to update display while developing document)
• acroread (updating display while developing document is a pain)

Figures

pdflatex does not handle encapsulated PostScript figures. Instead it handles all of these:

png

- good for unnatural bitmaps (i.e. generated from graphics); can be compressed losslessly

pdf

- good for real (vector) graphics (e.g. xfig)

jpg

- good for natural images - photos etc.

xfig and xmgr both can generate pdf images directly. Images can be converted readily to JPEG or png (using xv or convert).

This is all not as bad as it sounds. When you include figures, do not include the suffix of the file name. Whether you use latex or pdflatex, it will pick the file with the suffix it recognises (provided the relevant file exists - you have to generate both if you want to use both latex and pdflatex). But note: if you want to convert eps figures to pdf, use epstopdf, not ps2pdf (which gets the bounding box wrong).

Hyperlinks

If you include the html.sty style file:

\usepackage{html}

you will automatically get links put in for \ref and \cite references (references to figures, tables, sections, bibliography etc.).

You can also put in links to URLs if you know where they are located, by adding the URL to the bib entry, e.g.:

@misc{ASSAVID,
  title = {Automatic Segmentation and Semantic Annotation of Sports Videos},
  note = {European IST Programme: Project IST-1999-13082 ASSAVID: 
          \htmladdnormallink{http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka4/tesss/projects.htm}
                            {http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka4/tesss/projects.htm}},
  year = {1999}
}

The URL was put in twice here: 1st time is what gets printed; 2nd time is the actual link.