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This is a collection of random tips. I wrote them mainly as my own notes, however sharing them might be useful. Please drop me email if you would like to suggest any changes.

Writing Technical Articles

I do like LaTeX for writing articles, it allows me to focus first on the content, without being distracted by the actual formatting. Later in the process, I can add the typesetting and tweak automatic setting from LaTeX. There are plenty other good reasons for using LaTeX, but as often it is a matter of taste.

Anyway, for using LaTeX under Windows, I found the following software very helpful:

MiKTeX a TeX implementation for the Windows operating system.

Ghostscript an interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF.

TeXnicCenter an IDE for developing LaTeX documents under Windows.

Generating EPS Files in Windows

I use the Adobe PS printer to generate EPS files (make sure to select EPS as output in the advanced options). The output EPS file has an bounding box for the whole page instead of the figure/drawing itself. The bounding box defines the boundaries of the graphic. Including a graphic with the default bounding box results in large empty spaces in the LaTeX/PDF document. A tight fitting bounding is very desired.
Actually, ghost script does a very good job in automatically calculating the bounding box (File -> "PS to EPS").

For convenience, I wrote a small shell script to call ghost script to perform the calculation. Also, I placed a wrapping batch file into the context menu for "eps" files (following these instructions).

That pretty much does the trick very nicely, but there is still room for improvement. The next step would be to fix the bounding box automatically upon printing, plus having a nice file dialog that is independent of the application. Some application only present and ugly input field. I am thinking of adjusting CutePDF for this purpose.

WMF2EPS

Other people are successful using wmf2eps. As one part, it installs a generic post script printer driver. Then it allows to print out of any windows application into an EPS file (similar to the more manual approach above). It also should adjust the bounding box automatically. However, I did not have much success.

EPS to WMF

I did not have the best experience with this tool. The resulting WMF files differed too much from their original. The fonts did not match and curves did appear very coarsely approximated. As a result, I try to create a WMF directly in the first place. This was possible, because I generated measurement graphs using Octave, which allows for WMF output.

Too Small Head Margin using MikTeX

Sometimes the head margin (space between top of the page and first text line), seems to be awfully small. When comparing Linux compiled output and the Windows output using MikTeX, the Windows output did leave too little room on the head of the page. The culprit in my case was dvips. On linux it assumes a letter output, whereas it the Windows version assumes A4 as default. I found two possible solutions: adding an option to dvips or defining the papersize in the latex source code.

Alternative 1: adding paper size definition in LaTeX source code

Add within the LaTeX source code the following line:

%setup letter paper size for dvips 
% (it requires absolute values)
\special{papersize=8.5in,11in}

Alternative 2: Add Option to "dvips"

The option "-t letter" forces dvips to output letter sized paper, which fixes the headmargin problem as well.
In the end, I decided for this solution and added the extra parameter to the output profile of MikTeX (Build -> "Define Output Profiles ...").

PDF Tools

Here a collection of some PDF tools that I find useful. Obviously there are more tools out there in the world.

Acrobat Reader	The standard reader.
Foxit Reader	PDF Reader, allows saving form data, and simple manipulations, e.g. overwrite simple objects (line, rectangle, text ...). This reader has extended functionality, but is not as convenient to use as the Acrobat Reader.
CutePDF	Installs a pinter driver to generate PDF
PDFInfo	Modify the Meta Information In a PDF FILE
Pdftk	PDF Tool Kit. Command line for PDF manipulation (split, merge ...)
PDFTK Builder	Graphical Front end for Pdftk. However, it does not provide access to all functionality of Pdftk. (Web site also provides info for more PDF tools.)

Template for CECS Technical Report

Too many times I started copying the previous report, deleting everything and then starting over. To avoid this, find here a generic template. It is a result of many contributors.

Template for UCI Master Thesis

UCI imposes strict guidelines for a masters thesis: line spacing, margins, headers, font size (see the UCI Thesis and Dissertation Manual). There are many things to keep track of. This LaTeX template helped me on the road. All I had to worry about was the content. Good luck to you!
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