Re: [vox] Linux equivalent to PageMaker?

[Allan Hollander <adh@rachel.des.ucdavis.MAPSedu>]

Hi John --

There's nothing for Linux that's equivalent to PageMaker that has the
maturity of GIMP (though KWord is developing in a PageMaker-like way). 
But it sounds like the issue is getting Kinko's to be happy about the PDFs
rather than finding a PageMaker clone.  That is, if you can get LaTeX to
import the graphics and spit out good PDF, your faculty member will be 
happy.

The problem _might_ be that the default route for generating PDFs from
LaTeX embeds Type 3 bitmapped fonts rather than scalable Type 1 Postscript
fonts in the eventual PDF document.  (the usual route goes TeX dvi file
--> dvips --> postscript file  --> ghostscript or Acrobat Distiller
--> pdf file). 

This issue is highlighted in the NSF Fastlane grant proposal submission
system, which has a number of tips for generating clean pdfs from LaTeX
sources.  Basically the idea is to embed Type 1 fonts in the output from
dvips rather than Type 3 fonts.  The NSF folks avoid the problem by
encouraging people to submit dvi files (see
http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/TeX.html), but there's a recipe for embedding
Type 1 fonts in the document "Creating quality Adobe PDF files from TeX
with DVIPS" -- see
http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~ralph/MathOnWeb/TeXPDF.html.

Hope this helps,

Allan