Creating a poster for DIN A0 with TeX !

[Peter Biechele]

Who has already created a poster for the A0 paper format using TeX ???
What is the easiest way of doing it and is there a style file for it ??
Where can I find information ???

Thanks for any help !

Peter Biechele

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[Folkert Janssen]

Peter Biechele (peter.b...@physik.uni-freiburg.de) wrote:
: Who has already created a poster for the A0 paper format using TeX ???

I have the same problem in A1. The poster is to consist of 9 A4
pages, that have to be distributed over the A1 page and a large
headline. Any help is appreciated.

Thank You very much in advance.

Folki
fol...@cfalfa2.chfi.unipd.it
jan...@rhrk.uni-kl.de

[Paul Ruf]

Yes Yes, me too, but for a0-paper!!

Paul Ruf
supg...@physik.uni-kiel.de

[Rolf Mueller]

Folkert Janssen wrote:
>
> Peter Biechele (peter.b...@physik.uni-freiburg.de) wrote:
> : Who has already created a poster for the A0 paper format using TeX ???

I have been monitoring this discussion, that comes up from time to time
on this newsgroup for a while now. Here is the essence I have drawn from
it (all the following is IMHO):

- for a poster, you'll need large fonts & large papersize,
large fonts can be generated using the times-package:
\usepackage{times} ... \fontsize{20}{20}\selectfont
large papersize is posible using
\textwidth , \textheight, \setmargins (\usepackage{vmargin})

in order to render postscript with dvips, you can use the special
\special{papersize=1189mm,841mm}
you'll have to include the papersize in dvips's config.ps:
in my experience, a line :
@ a0 1189mm 841mm
will do.

- the more serious problem is, that you'll have to arrange text and
figures over the poster area in latex. I don't have a good solution for
this, either. IMHO^2, an a0-poster should be devided into columns, which
in turn should include the figures.
However, AFAIK, multicol can't handle floats. Thus, should ne1 have a
solution, how to make a good layout of textblocks and figure in multiple
columns (of different width, s.v.p.), please let me know.
The workaround I chose is to latex the individual columns, render them
to ps and than put them together in tgif
(http://bourbon.cs.columbia.edu:8001/tgif/)

HTH
rolf

--
Rolf Mueller
Dept. Animal Physiology, University of Tuebingen,
Morgenstelle 28, D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany
Phone +49 70 71 29 77 39 3; Fax +49 70 71 29 26 18
rolf.m...@uni-tuebingen.de;
http://bzt09.zool.biologie.uni-tuebingen.de

[Hartmut Schirmer]

Folkert Janssen wrote:
>
> Peter Biechele (peter.b...@physik.uni-freiburg.de) wrote:
> : Who has already created a poster for the A0 paper format using TeX ???
>

> I have the same problem in A1. The poster is to consist of 9 A4
> pages, that have to be distributed over the A1 page and a large
> headline. Any help is appreciated.
>

I did a A0 poster with LaTeX 2e recently.

Main steps were:

1) set up the right paper dimensions using the geometry style
with 'dvips' package option
2a) set up dvips for cm type 1 fonts (either BaKoMa or BSR), don't
forget to use OT1 font encoding !
or 2b) use the PSNFSS package so LaTeX uses postscript fonts instead
of computer modern
3) make a picture environment covering the whole page and place
your contenst at the right places
4) run the dvi file through dvips and _check_ the result using
ghostscript (GSVIEW for OS/2 and Windows can display A0 format,
ghostview on Unix won't)
5) send the final .ps - file to the printer

Some additional notes:

The 'graphics' and the 'color' package will allow you to resize, scale
and colorize elements on your poster.

The text parts on my poster were done putting the text in a rectangular
box and rescaling the box afterwards, easy way to get bigger fonts:

\begin{lrbox}{\textI}
\begin{minipage}{15cm}
... some text ...
\end{minipage}
\end{lrbox}

\begin{picture}(...)
\put(10,10){\fbox{\resizebox{30cm}{!}{\usebox{\textI}}}}
\end{picture}

(One may also use \scalebox instead of \resizebox)

Hope this helps,
Hartmut
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Automatisierungs- & Regelungstech. | h...@techfak.uni-kiel.de
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