RI | Help | Downloading

How to Download and View Online Publications

We currently support two publication formats: portable document format (pdf extension) and compressed postscript (ps.gz extension). PDF files are easily downloaded, viewed, and printed on almost every computing platform, while ps.gz files are oriented towards the Unix operating system (and its many varieties).

Downloading

Publication files can usually be downloaded simply by clicking on the extension name (pdf or ps.gz) on a publication page or in a publication list. Depending on your browser setup, this may automatically display the file in the browser window, or it may pop up a dialog box that allows you to save the file to disk. On some browsers, if you want to force the browser to save the file to disk, press and hold the shift key while clicking the file to download (shift-click).

Viewing

Portable document format (pdf) files are viewed with the Acrobat reader, which can be downloaded from Adobe's web site. Acrobat reader is available for most versions of Unix as well as for Windows machines and Macintoshes. Depending on your browser, you may be able to install a plugin that allows you to view the files directly in the browser. Alternately, you can save the file to disk, and view using the Acrobat reader as a standalone application. PDF files are usually somewhat smaller than the corresponding compressed postcript file, but the image quality may be slightly lower.

Compressed postscript files (ps.gz) are provided mainly for members of the research community. Viewing postscript is much easier on Unix systems than on Windows machines or Macintoshes. We recommend that you view the PDF version of the file if using a non-Unix platform.

We use gzip to compress all postscript files. A variety of utilities can decompress these files, but the one you need depends on your operating system. Here are some programs that will work: gunzip (Unix, Windows, and Mac), WinZip (Windows), StuffIt Expander (Macintosh, Windows).

Once you have uncompressed the file, you will need a postscript viewer. Again, this depends on your operating system. Some possibilities include: ghostview or gv (Unix), gsview (Windows), ghostscript (Macintosh).

If you have a postscript printer, you can print the files directly. Otherwise, you can print from the ghostscript-related programs described above (Windows and Mac) or use the (sometimes hard to find) Drop*PS utility (Mac), all of which can print to non-postscript printers as well.

PDF printing tip - Occasionally, Acrobat reader has problems printing certain fonts - the text is garbled or spread randomly across the page. This problem can sometimes be corrected by setting the "Download Fonts Once" PostScript Option on the Print popup dialog to the off position.