Making and printing a poster using latex poster macros

These are instructions for preparing and printing a large-format poster appropriate for conference presentation. Click here to get a postscript file containing a full poster example. View it in ghostview with "seascape" orientation & 0.25 magnification (in the PC version (GSView) you may have to use the "User Defined" options in Media menu; set width to 900 and height to 1200).

1. Making the poster file

Download template latex source file UFposter.tex, blank figure ps file blank.ps, and UF logo ps file LetterShape.eps
You may wish to preview this file to get a sense of how it looks. To do this:
latex UFposter.tex dvips -o UFposter.ps UFposter gv UFposter.ps
In Ghostview (gv), choose "Seascape" from the orientation menu and 0.25 magnification from magnification menu to view the full page. On a PC (GSView) try "User Defined" option in Media menu with width=900, height=1200. If you want to view the text in the poster, you may need a larger magnification.
Edit the file with your favorite text editor. Enter your text & encapsulated postscript figures, using the macros used in the template. Follow the steps above to create a ps file for viewing as you add & make corrections. Free advice: latex and preview often while coding.
Sizing. You will note in header to UFposter.tex source that various sizes are possible. These are defined in terms of Hoehe(Height) und Breite (Width). (macros are originally from someone in Germany & were cribbed from U. Karlsruhe by P. Hirschfeld) The recommended procedure is to first generate a "Special Format" size poster file, which is relatively easy to manipulate and view. It can be resized later to A0 (90 x 110 cm) full poster size, or A4 or Letter size as desired (see below). Note the large format printers currently in use at UF's OIR have max width of about 90cm or 3 ft., but the paper comes in rolls so the length is variable. See below the specifications for width and height of various formats. Default in the template is "Special Format", 32 x 39cm with 4 columns. This is the format of the template currently.
Once you have edited your latex file and have a nice "Special Format" size poster, you need to resize file to a size suitable for printing. Recommended size: A0 (roughly 110cm by 90cm). To do this,
1. Download the postscript resizing script poster_resizeK or try poster_resize . Thx to Fabricio Ferrari for providing latter script. Some people have had resizing problems, and I don't understand why always.
2. Choose your scale factor S. To make recommended size poster (A0), choose S=2.82. To get roughly letter-size poster which will print onto a single letter-size sheet, choose S=.67.
3. Type
  poster_resize UFposter.ps S
  where UFposter.ps is your postscript file, and S is the scale factor. This should produce a new file names UFposter.resize.ps in which the bounding boxes are changed, etc. You can rename it so that you can remember the size, e.g. UFposterA0.ps. Check UFposterA0 one last time before printing!

2. Printing out at QTP

With luck, you have a beautiful poster with which to impress your colleagues at the conference in Maui.

pjh@phys.ufl.edu