How to get nice looking PDF files from LaTeX and DVIPS

The Problem:

By default, a document produced with LaTeX uses so-called cm fonts, and these differ significantly from any of the standard Type1 fonts built-in to PDF. As a consequence, PDF uses low-resolution bitmap images of these fonts to display the document. It prints fine, but it looks ugly on the screen.

The Solution:

If you want to force LaTeX to use one of the standard Type1 fonts already built-in to PDF, use the command pslatex to generate the .dvi file, and then use dvips and ps2pdf as you normally would.
- Advantages: This is the simplest solution that anyone can implement, and the built-in fonts look better on screen than any other option.
- Disadvantages: The standard Type1 fonts are not the same size as cm fonts, so the page layout of an existing document will be altered.
If you want to use the regular LaTeX cm fonts, you will need to do a few things to your system:
1. Download Type1 versions of the cm fonts.
2. Configure dvips to include Type1 fonts in the PostScript files it generates.
3. Install pstill, the free alternative ps2pdf converter.

The Details:

Solution A is simple, so the details are all contained above. Here are the details for Solution B, one step at a time:

Download Type1 versions of the cm fonts.
You can download them directly from the American Mathematical Society (click here).
This gzipped tar file contains two subdirectories that you will need to access later, when you configure pstill.
Configure dvips to include Type1 fonts in the PostScript files it generates.
As root, go to /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ and modify the file updmap. Change the part of the file that reads
```
type1_default=false
# type1_default=true
```
so that it reads
```
# type1_default=false
type1_default=true
```
Then execute updmap (it's a script). Now, whenever you run dvips, the fonts will be included in the PostScript file that it generates.
This increases the size of the postscript file only slightly.
Install pstill, the free alternative ps2pdf converter.
You can obtain the software from the pstill home page. The distribution contains a README file that explains how to install it, but if you are impatient, just follow these steps:
- As root, unpack the gzipped tar file into /usr/local/src/. It will create a directory called pstill_dist, which contains a PSFonts subdirectory.
- Copy everything from the afm and pfb directories of the tarfile that you downloaded in step 1 into pstill_dist/PSFonts.
- From pstill_dist/PSFonts, execute the command ../linkAllFonts.sh
- From pstill_dist/ execute the command pstill -v -I
- Copy the pstill executable to /usr/local/bin/
- Add a line to your .cshrc file that says setenv PSTILL_PATH=/usr/local/src/pstill_dist
You are now ready to convert PostScript files into nice PDF with a command like pstill -o output.pdf input.ps