%CSLIS technical report 2001-412-091
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%pdf in the fastlane

PDF files produced using dvips and then acrobat distiller are blurry
when viewed on a screen with Acrobat Reader. However, they look fine
when printed. This may be a problem for proposals submitted to the
NSF's fastlane system. There exists evidence that some reviewers read
the proposals on the screen.

Below are two solutions to this problem. 

The following is taken from the NSF's pdf faq at
http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a1/pdfcreat.htm 

Use the command line 

dvips -Ppdf  <file>.dvi

to produce the postscript file and then distill the file using adobe
distiller.

The -Ppdf switch tells dvips that the postscript file is destined to
be converted to pdf. Apparently, the fonts are included in the
postscript file at a higher resolution and consequently produces a
larger file. However, this large file has the advantage of being
readable.

A simpler solution is to use the command pdflatex (or pdftex) which is
part of our current (as of 1/2001) miktex package on the Windoze
machines and the tetex package on the linux machines.

This produces a pdf file directly from the latex (or tex) file. Thus,
it is somewhat simpler than the three step procedure using latex,
dvips and distiller. 

I am not sure if this second solution will produce fastlane compliant
files. But I expect the answer is yes.