PDF Generation Guide

This section describes how to prepare PDF files for submission on PATS. Independent of the software you use to write your document, the submitted PDF file must satisfy the following requirements:

• It must open correctly in standard PDF readers.
• All non-standard fonts used in the document should be embedded in the PDF.
• The PDF must not contain active content such as scripts or other malicious content.
• The PDF must not be encrypted or password-protected. (This applies to the files you upload. PATS may later apply its own processing/protection to the combined submission PDF).
• Text, figures, and tables must remain clearly legible on screen and when printed.
• When exporting the PDF, avoid aggressive image compression or downsampling that makes figures difficult to read.
• The PDF file should be generated for 300dpi or higher (print or prepress settings are ok). Screen resolutions, etc., may be of insufficient quality to easily read or print your documents.

Before submission, carefully proofread the exported PDF itself, not just the source document, and check that the PDF does not differ from the original document in any significant way.

If you are using TeX or LaTeX, there are two basic options to create a PDF file: directly generate the PDF file with LUALaTeX / XeLaTeX / PDFLaTeX / PDFTeX (LUALaTeX is the current recommended engine in 2026) or create the PDF file from a DVI file (see below; generally not used anymore). For special TeX frontends and implementations for various platforms, commercial versions, etc., you should refer to the documentation of these programs.

The original version of TeX and LaTeX produce DVI files. To generate acceptable PDF files from these, first convert the DVI file to PostScript with the following command:

dvips -Ppdf -G0 -t a4 -o FILE.ps FILE.dvi

Then you should run the ps2pdf program to create the PDF file from the PostScript file:

ps2pdf  -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress \
        -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
        -dAutoFilterColorImages=false \
        -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false \
        -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode \
        -dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode \
        -dMonoImageFilter=/FlateEncode \
        -dDownsampleColorImages=false \
        -dDownsampleGrayImages=false \
         FILE.ps FILE.pdf

This command also works for postscript files generated in different ways.

If you are using LibreOffice or any of its variants to write your report, export the file in PDF format using the File → Export As PDF menu. Under the options window, you do not need to select any special options. But make sure you turn off JPEG compression by selecting lossless compression to avoid image quality problems, and we also do not recommend reducing the image resolution.

Newer Word programs offer the option to save the file as a PDF. This should be OK, but carefully check the settings and resulting quality.