>
> On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Jack Campin wrote:
>
> > On my setup (old Macs) I can generate PostScript from some applications
> > for free (I think, haven't tried lately) but creating Acrobat files
> > needs a utility that costs money. Is there a way to do it free on any
> > current platform?
>
> Ghostscript's ps2pdf ? Circularity alert ... !
> Also pdfTeX.
>
> The usual free suspects, in fact.
>
>
>
> I originally took up Linux because it seemed simpler than getting TeX
> running on DOS.
<Grin>
For completeness, I should mention that *if* you only need to
generate single staff music, and don't want to do anything too fancy with
lyrics, that abc2mtex/musixTeX creates a dvi file, and dvips or dvipdf
will create a postscript or pdf file from it, as you choose. (I haven't
tried pdftex.) Moreover, you can write a script (Linux) or batch file
(Dos/Windows) to automate the process. And the price is right---it's all
freeware.
The dvipdf scripts are part of ghostscript; dvips is part of TeX.
So you need TeX and Ghostscript. But...it occurs to me that, while
installing TeX used to be something better left to a system administrator,
that was in the days when a 10 M installation was considered huge, and now
there are packages--tetex, miktex---which do the installation and
configuration work. Maybe it's no longer quite so unthinkable. Of course,
it will never be as simple to use as abc2ps and clones--musixtex is pretty
fussy--gross understatement--but sometimes the control of the output is
worth it.
Cheers,
John Walsh
To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
