Making a Poster Using LaTeX and Xfig

Making a poster from a LaTeX document using xfig consists of only a few easy steps.

Produce a LaTeX document containing the pages of the poster

An example master file might be

\documentclass[12pt]{report}
\usepackage{amssymb,epsfig}
\graphicspath{{./}{Figs/}}

\setlength{\topmargin}{0.0in}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-0.2in}
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{0.1in}
\setlength{\textheight}{9.4in}
\setlength{\textwidth}{6.7in}

\def\crest{{\crestfont \char1}}
\font\crestfont=oxcrest40 scaled\magstep2

\title{\vspace*{-8ex} \Huge \bf{
        British Applied\\[1ex]
        Mathematics Colloquium\\[7ex]}
        \crest\\[4ex]}
\author{ \Large Keith Gillow\\[1ex]
        \Large St. Catherine's College\\[1ex]
        \Large Oxford\\[2ex]
        +\\[1ex]
        \normalsize S.J. Chapman, S.D. Howison and J.R. Ockendon\\[3ex]}
\date{April 1997}

\begin{document}
\baselineskip=13pt plus1pt
\pagestyle{empty}
\maketitle
\include{talkcontent}
\end{document}

where the talk content itself is in the file talkcontent.tex.

Note you could alternatively use a slides or foils class for bigger fonts, see the slides and foils page for more details.

Making the EPS pages for your Poster

If the above master file is called talk.tex then first latex it and then produce individual encapsulated poscript files of the pages with the (tcsh) command

foreach i (1 2 3 4 5 6)
dvips -E -p $i -l $i -o talk$i.eps talk
end

where the numbers in the brackets are the numbers of the pages to be turned into eps files.

The resulting pages will have tight bounding boxes around the page content. If you want all the bounding boxes to be the same (and hence the eps files the same size) you need to change the bounding boxes in the files. You could do this by hand editing the bounding box line using emacs. The BoundingBox line will be near the top of the file and of the form

%%BoundingBox: 0 0 596 842

Note the numbers used should be the bounding box of the largest eps file or the size desired. The number represent the coordinates of the lower left and upper right hand corners of the bounding box. I would suggest making the bounding box 10 points larger than the largest eps file, i.e. subtract 10 from the first 2 numbers and add 10 to the second two.

Make the poster using Xfig

Frames

Now, choose a frame for your poster, e.g. one made in xfig. Apply the right ratio for the DIN A formats

Here are standard frames which you can download:
landscape portrait

Title

Start xfig.

• If you have an xfig frame:
  Load the frame and save it as your poster fig file.
• If you have an EPS frame:
  Select Picture Object from the drawing modes and place the upper left corner and draw a box. A Requester will appear. In that requester set the opposite corner according to the DIN A format and wether you are using a portrait or a landscape frame. Processing is faster if you do not include any EPS yet.

Choose a font for your title and place it anywhere you want to have it.

Including your EPS pages

Select Picture Object from the Drawing modes. Draw a box starting at 0,0. In the appearing Requester edit the First Corner to 0,0 if necessary and set the Opposite corner to 1441,2000 (DIN A ratio). Confirm with Done. It is again faster if you do not include any EPS Pages yet. This box is unlikely to be the right size. You can Scale the box to the right size with the scale button. You can then move it to the desired location with the Move button.

You can now use copy to add further identical boxes for each of the pages of the poster in appropriate locations.

Having created POBs for all of your pages you may need to change the size of them all to make them fit the frame. Select the grouping tool in the Editing modes (upper left tool). Draw a frame arround all of your POBs with the middle mouse button or select them by hand with the left mouse button. (Do not select the frame or the title elements.) If you have selected all of them press the right mouse button to group them into one object. Now you can move and scale the group according to your frame. If you should need to rearrange some of your POBs, you can break the group (with the upper right tool in the editing modes panel).

Save your xfig file.

Now, when your POBs are scaled and placed correctly, break the group (with the upper right tool in the editing modes panel). Select Edit from the editing modes. Edit every POB setting the picture filename entry to the right EPS page file. If you do not know the path and correct name you can use a file requester with Browse. Including your pages will last a while an produce some Unaligned access errors (stdout) which can be ignored.

Save your xfig file.

Exporting your poster

Select Export... from the menu. Set Language to Postscript. Now set the size of the page to A4 and the Magnification to 100%. Export your poster to a DIN A4 test page. Print that page. If you do not need to change anything, export your page setting the Paper Size to A0 and Magnification to 400%.

Note some printing systems have problems directly printing postscript output from xfig in which case you can conver tit to a PDF file instead using the convert command.

A0/A1 Printing

There is A0/A1 printer in OUCS. I would strongly recommend you check out this facility with OUCS before you make the poster to make sure you get it right.

Example

As a quick example I have taken an old 16 page latex document I had and made it into an A0 poster. To construct the poster (already having the latex) took only 30-60 minutes. The eps pages, the fig file and the resulting A4 and A0 versions of the poster are all available here.

Initial info and idea from Thomas Soddemann