How to Retrieve Documents
The course documents (lecture notes, assignments, etc) are made
available in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can view and
print these files using various free viewer programs such as Acrobat, Ghostscript, and xpdf.
The document retrieval page lets you you
retrieve these documents in various other formats, including
Postscript.
This conversion is done by Ghostscript, a free package that
converts from PDF or Postscript to most graphics and printer
formats.
The conversion options are:
- Directory
- This must be selected on the document
retrieval page and determines the files that are available.
- Source File
- The name of the PDF file to be converted. Only the files in
the directory previously selected are available.
- Image Format
- The desired image file format. PDF and TIFF-LZW are usually
the most compact formats for viewing.
Formats suitable for printing:
- Postscript - Postscript format
- HP-DeskJet - HP DeskJet
- HP-LaserJet - HP LaserJet
- Epson - EPSON dot-matrix printer and compatibles
- IBM-Proprinter - IBM ProPrinter and compatibles
- Formats suitable for viewing:
- TIFF - TIFF with LZW compression
- BMP - MS-Windows monochrome bitmap
- PCX - PC-Paint monochrome bitmap
- PBM - Portable Bit Map (raw)
- TIFF-G4 - TIFF with Group 4 compression
- GIF - Compuserve GIF
- Horizontal and Vertical Resolution
- The desired image
resolutions in dpi (dots per inch). On a laser printer 300 dpi
is usually excellent, 150 dpi adequate and 75 dpi barely
readable. Note that for many image formats the file size
increases as approximately the square of the
resolution.
You must select a resolution supported by your printer. Laser
and DeskJet printers typically support 75, 150 and 300 dpi with
the same H and V resolutions. Inkjet and dot-matrix printers
typically support even multiples of 60 dpi horizontally and odd
multiples of 60 or 72 dpi vertically. Postscript and PDF files
are resolution-independent.
- Packaging
- For most formats one image file is generated per page.
These files can be packaged in different ways:
- none - The files are simply concatenated into one
file. Normally useful only with Postscript and other printing formats.
- zip - For MS-DOS. The files are packaged and compressed
using the zip utility.
- tgz - For Unix. The files are packaged using tar and
compressed with gzip.
- OK
- This field causes the image file(s) to be created and
packaged. This may take a minute or more and depends on the page
complexity, number of pages, resolution, compression format, etc.
A page is then displayed showing the size of the converted file
which you can retrieve if you wish.
Other resolutions, formats, and compression methods are available
and can be made available if required. Send comments to:
Ed Casas /
edc@ece.ubc.ca