General ⇒ compil \pbox with pdflatex

[jcdemay]

I have a latex file I can smoothly compil using pslatex. I would like to compil it with pdflatex, however, because the latex file is containing some \pbox sequences, I can't.

Is there a way to make pdflatex understand the \pbox sequences ? Or maybe I can replace the \pbox sequences by a pdflatex equivalent ?

And no, I don't want to play with ps2pdf (long story...)

Regards.

[localghost]

It's not really clear to me where the problem is, but I think that using PSNFSS is the better way to get access to postscript fonts. To clarify this issue you should provide some code in the sense of a minimal working example (MWE). Please read carefully the advices on the linked page when creating this MWE.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten¹

[jcdemay]

It's not really clear to me where the problem is, but I think that using PSNFSS is the better way to get access to postscript fonts. To clarify this issue you should provide some code in the sense of a minimal working example (MWE). Please read carefully the advices on the linked page when creating this MWE.

I don't see how my problem is related to a font problem.

here is a sample:

Code: Select all

\pbox{0.95\textwidth}{}{linewidth=2mm,framearc=0.3,linecolor=lightblue,fillstyle=gradient,gradangle=0,gradbegin=white,gradend=whiteblue,gradmidpoint=1.0,framesep=1em}
{
	\begin{minipage}[c][9cm][c]{0.78\textwidth}
		\begin{center}
			{\sc \Huge Hello World !}\\[10mm]
			{\Large From me\\[7.5mm]for you}
		\end{center}
	\end{minipage}
}

This code compils with pslatex, but not with pdflatex because of the pbox sequence. However, I really need to use pdflatex (long story), so I was wonderered if there was a way to make pdflatex understand pbox or if there is a pdflatex compatible sequence that could do the same job.

[localghost]

[...] I don't see how my problem is related to a font problem. [...]

That's because your understanding of pslatex is very misleading. What you call "pslatex" is simply the latex compiler. The pslatex package I expected is font related. Therefore I requested a MWE, which is still necessary because I don't know where the \pbox command comes from. But as I now see from this code snippet, there are some arguments which are normally used with PSTricks. And that is the reason why this can't be compiled with pdflatex.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

if there is a pdflatex compatible sequence that could do the same job.

you could try pgf/TikZ. I've made this short example for you, compile it with pdflatex:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt,svgnames]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}
\newcommand{\pbox}[4]{%
  \begin{tikzpicture}
    \node[#3] {\begin{minipage}[t][#2][t]{#1}%
      #4
    \end{minipage}};
  \end{tikzpicture}}

\begin{document}
\pbox{5cm}{}{rectangle,drop shadow,rounded corners=18pt,inner sep=10pt,
             shade,top color=LightSlateBlue, bottom color=AliceBlue}
             {\centering{\Huge Test}\par This is just a test.}
\pbox{3cm}{}{rectangle,drop shadow,rounded corners=5pt,inner sep=10pt,
             shade,top color=DarkOrange, bottom color=LightGoldenrod}
             {\centering{\Large Test}\par Another one.}

\bigskip
\pbox{.7\textwidth}{}{rectangle,drop shadow,rounded corners=5pt,inner sep=5pt,
  shade,left color=DarkRed, right color=Tomato}
  {\centering\textcolor{white}{\textbf{This is the last line for this demonstration.}}}

\end{document}

Stefan

[jcdemay]

[...] I don't see how my problem is related to a font problem. [...]

That's because your understanding of pslatex is very misleading. What you call "pslatex" is simply the latex compiler. The pslatex package I expected is font related.

Well on my system, latex is a symbolic link to either pslatex or pdflatex depending on which one is your default compiler, but you were right, it's not like I knew what I was doing, after a few minutes of inspection, I got to know that pbox is a newcommand used in the academic poster class I downloaded, newcommand which is using psshadowbox, which is from the pstricks package, and which therefore can't be used with pdflatex.

[jcdemay]

you could try pgf/TikZ. I've made this short example for you, compile it with pdflatex:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt,svgnames]{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}
\newcommand{\pbox}[4]{%
  \begin{tikzpicture}
    \node[#3] {\begin{minipage}[t][#2][t]{#1}%
      #4
    \end{minipage}};
  \end{tikzpicture}}

\begin{document}
\pbox{5cm}{}{rectangle,drop shadow,rounded corners=18pt,inner sep=10pt,
             shade,top color=LightSlateBlue, bottom color=AliceBlue}
             {\centering{\Huge Test}\par This is just a test.}
\pbox{3cm}{}{rectangle,drop shadow,rounded corners=5pt,inner sep=10pt,
             shade,top color=DarkOrange, bottom color=LightGoldenrod}
             {\centering{\Large Test}\par Another one.}

\bigskip
\pbox{.7\textwidth}{}{rectangle,drop shadow,rounded corners=5pt,inner sep=5pt,
  shade,left color=DarkRed, right color=Tomato}
  {\centering\textcolor{white}{\textbf{This is the last line for this demonstration.}}}

\end{document}

Stefan

Impressive, with this few information (my bad, see previous post), you managed to provide a perfect replacement ! Great job, thank you ^^.

So, tikz is the pdflatex equivalent of pstricks. I'll try to port the class to it, thanks for the tips.

[localghost]

Well on my system, latex is a symbolic link to either pslatex or pdflatex depending on which one is your default compiler, but you were right, it's not like I knew what I was doing, after a few minutes of inspection, I got to know that pbox is a newcommand used in the academic poster class I downloaded, newcommand which is using psshadowbox, which is from the pstricks package, and which therefore can't be used with pdflatex.

In the meantime I found out that a \pbox command is also provided by the pbox package. So, you can see that there is a lot potential for confusion.