Viewing and Printing the Course Notes



General Information

All of my course materials are available online in one or both of two formats: PostScript, and Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format).

This document describes how to read those two formats on a variety of computers.



Viewing and Printing PostScript Files

My lecture notes, are available in PostScript format. PostScript has the advantage of being the easier of the two formats to generate. However, it has two major disadvantages. First, it is somewhat "flakey" -- it works on my PostScript printer, and usually works on other PostScript printers, but occasionally refuses to print. Second, while there are good PostScript viewers that run under Unix, the PostScript viewers that run on PCs and Macintoshes aren't very good.

My suggestion to you would be to view all the current class materials in PDF format, and only view the old materials in PostScript.

To view PostScript files on Unix using Netscape, you may need to tell Netscape to use the "ghostview" program to open all PostScript files. Try to look at one of the lectures. If it opens, that's great. If it wants to download something to your directory, it doesn't know about ghostview.

To fix this problem using Netscape, choose "Preferences..." under the "Edit" menu. Then click on the "Navigator" triangle on the right, and select "Applications" underneath. In the scrollbox in the middle of the screen, scroll down and find "PostScript Document" in the "Description" column. Select that line and choose "Edit...". In the box that pops up, choose "Application" under "Handle By", type "ghostview %s" (without the quotes) in the box below "Application", and choose "OK" to close that box. Now the list under "Helpers" should show "Postscript Document" followed by "ghostview %s". Choose "OK" to save your changes. You should now be able to read the course materials.



Viewing and Printing Adobe PDF Files

All of my current lecture notes are available in Adobe's PDF (Portable Document Format).

For details on how to get the Adobe Acrobat software, go to Adobe's web site. The software is free, and is available at http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html. My notes are in PDF version 3.0, so in the unlikely event that you have an earlier version of the software installed on your computer, you'll need to upgrade to version 3.0 or later to view my notes.

Again, if your browser doesn't know what to do with PDF files, you'll have to tell it how to open them. If you are using Netscape, choose "Preferences..." under the "Edit" menu. Then click on the "Navigator" triangle on the right, and select "Applications" underneath. In the scrollbox in the middle of the screen, scroll down and find "Adobe PDF file" in the "Description" column. Select that line and choose "Edit...". In the box that pops up, choose "Application" under "Handle By", type "acroread %s" (without the quotes) in the box below "Application", and choose "OK" to close that box. Now the list under "Helpers" should show "Adobe PDF file" followed by "acroread %s". Choose "OK" to save your changes. You should now be able to read the course materials.

If "Adobe PDF file" does not appear in the "Description" column, choose "New", and type "Adobe PDF file" in the "Description" box, "application/pdf" in the "MIME Type" box, ".pdf" in the "Suffixes" box, and then follow the "Handle By" directions above.

The procedure on PCs and Macintoshes is similar, although it varies slightly depending on which platform you're using, whether you're using Netscape or Internet Explorer, etc. There's no way I could possibly cover all the possibilities here...