This conference only accepts PostScript files for electronic submissions.

PostScript issues.

In principle PostScript is device independent - in practice files often depend on the target printer. Furthermore this printer might be inferred by software in mysterious ways. The main problem we have encountered is that Europeans and Asians use a4 paper while Americans use US letter size. Usually a given file can be printed on both (with wrong margins in the mismatched case). However if the file actually specifies the paper size it wants to use, then on some installations the printer will pause with a message like "Put the a4 paper tray in!" -- this makes the file de facto unprintable in US.

Thus you must format your submission to be printable on US letter paper (8.5 by 11 inch). The preferred resolution is 300 dpi. If you are in the US then most likely this is the default on your system but please check whether any of the warnings below apply to you.

dvips users:

If you tell dvips that you intend to print on one printer, but the resulting PostScript file is sent to some other printer, various bad things can happen. The recommended command (including US) to use is

dvips -P modern filename

TeX & LaTeX users (outside US):

Please be aware that although the default in TeX, LaTeX 2.09, and LaTeX 2e is the letter size format, in many places this has been hacked so that the default is the a4 format. The workaround is of course to restore the original default. Failing this, in LaTeX 2e adding the option letterpaper to \documentclass should do the trick. (That is, your document should start with, eg, \documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article} ).

Note however that the above only gives you the proper margins: dvips might still generate the wrong PostScript if dvips was hacked so that it uses the option "-t a4" as default. In this case use

dvips -P modern -t letter filename

This should make your PostScript suitable for a letter size printer. However this will cause the document to be "nonconforming" and can cause it not to print on certain a4 printers. This is really a last resort option.

FrameMaker users:

Note that the PostScript generated by FrameMaker is always designed to print on only one type of paper (letter or A4) and it is not easy to convert. It might pass our preliminary test and nevertheless be unprintable on US letter paper on most printers. Please make sure that you specify US letter as the paper size!!

If you use another mechanism for generating PostScript or if the above recipes do not work for you, please contact the technical support people on your installation. We can not help you further with this issue. However we would like to hear if the impossibility of generating letter size PostScript prevented you from electronic e-mail submission.

Go to the ISAAC'00 Home Page