LaTeX Error: Unknown graphic extension: .gif

[mari...@gmail.com]

Dear LaTeXers,

I just started a new job as a tech writer, and i'd like to use LaTeX
to write our manuals. So i started to make an example to show my
colleagues how great it is, but i can't include a gif file !! I
promise i looked all morning for an answer on the web...

I (try to) use MiKTex with TeXnikCenter, and compile with "LaTeX =>
pdf" compiler. Here's the bit of code:

\documentclass{book} % Your input file must contain these two
lines
%\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx} % this i tried but didn't work
\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\includegraphics[height=13pt]{file.gif}

\end{document}

and i get the error "LaTeX Error: Unknown graphic extension: .gif".
Mind you, including a pdf file works fine.

Thank in advance,
Marie.

[Enrico Gregorio]

<mari...@gmail.com> wrote:

You can't include a gif file in pdftex. Transform it into png or
jpg.

Ciao
Enrico

[mari...@gmail.com]

On Mar 4, 3:20 pm, Enrico Gregorio <grego...@math.unipd.it> wrote:

Thanks for your quick answer.

In my not so successful search on the web, it was mentioned a few
times that pdflatex can take care of jpeg, bmp and gif files... like
in http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/figures.html#pdf,
for example.

Marie.

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Tue, 4 Mar 2008 06:16:20 -0800 (PST) schrieb mari...@gmail.com:

> Dear LaTeXers,
>
> I just started a new job as a tech writer, and i'd like to use LaTeX
> to write our manuals. So i started to make an example to show my
> colleagues how great it is, but i can't include a gif file !! I
> promise i looked all morning for an answer on the web...

Where did you look? If I search google.groups for "gif pdflatex" I get a
lot of useful answers. Even "gif latex" has some useful hits on the
first page.

In short: it doesn't work. Convert the gif to another format.

--
Ulrike Fischer

[Enrico Gregorio]

<mari...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In my not so successful search on the web, it was mentioned a few
> times that pdflatex can take care of jpeg, bmp and gif files... like
> in http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/figures.html#pdf,
> for example.

I doubt that pdftex has ever supported gif or bmp inclusion. It used to
support tiff, but this support has been dropped many version numbers
ago.

The main problem is that those two formats are not "free". For tiff it
was that too many formats called tiff are actually in circulation.

It's not difficult to find conversion utilities from gif and bmp to
png or jpg.

For what it's worth, let's mention that the recent versions of pdftex
support inclusion of jbig2 files.

Ciao
Enrico