ai2pdf is a tool to automatically convert Adobe Illustrator figures to PDF during the LaTeX build process. No more manual conversions in Illustrator after you edited files.
You need Mac OS, Adobe Illustrator, and TeXlive (or another TeX distribution).
- Put
ai2pdf(without extension) somewhere into your$PATH, e.g.,/usr/local/bin - Put
ai2pdf.styin it's own directory your local texmf tree, e.g.,/usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/tex/latex/ai2pdf/ - Run
texhashto update your TeX package cache.
At this point you can run pdflatex --shell-escape ai2pdf.tex to see whether everything works. The output should look like in ai2pdf.pdf.
Look at ai2pdf.tex for a minimal example. ai2pdf redefines the \includegraphics command. Whenever you include a file that exists with a .ai extension, Adobe Illustrator is called and the file is exported to PDF. You don't need any extra commands in your tex source. Just use \includegraphics as usual.
ai2pdf uses the file modification date to decide whether the PDF for an AI
file needs to be created/updated. Only if the PDF file does not exist or the
modification date of the AI is newer than the PDF's, Illustrator is called to
update the PDF file.
Note: You need to run pdflatex with the --shell-escape parameter when compiling. Otherwise, the package is not able to execute the ai2pdf conversion tool from within LaTeX.
If you intend to use ai2pdf in teams where not everyone uses a Mac and
Illustrator, or where not everyone can be expected to have ai2pdf
installed, check Tools/ai2pdfwrapper.sty.
The idea is to copy ai2pdfwrapper.sty to the directory where your main latex
file resides. You can then include the wrapper instead of ai2pdf. The
wrapper will check whetehr ai2pdf is available and, if not, output a
warning message. Compilation continutes though, only the PDF files might be
out of date.
- Make a Windows version of
ai2pdfusing VBA.