As requested here are the helpful bits of random knowledge for doing LaTeX bits:

Figures from IRIS Explorer

Getting a good looking figure out of IRIS Explorer can seem an art. I'll assume you've got everything lined up looking exactly as you want in the Render window.

• Make sure your Render window is large enough to provide enough detail later on. Remember, though, the size of the picture is related to how big the window is.
• In the 'Viewing' menu select 'Antialiasing'. [Turn off when not doing next bit!]
• In the 'file' menu select 'Print'.
• Save to a file. Press enter after choosing the filename.
• If you saved to EPS then there will be extra white space around the image which needs to be removed:
  • Edit the bounding box of the image so it is only the desired portion
  • Load 'Showcase on a cself machine
  • 'File'-'Insert'-'EPS' to select the picture
  • Select EPS box if you've unselected it
  • 'File'-'Save As...'-'EPS' to save...
  • Choose a filename and then'Selected only' from the stupid dialogue box
• If you saved as an image then there may be extra white space around the image which needs to be removed:
  • Choose a suitable image processing package (eg imgview, xv) to crop the visible portion
  • Convert your file to EPS:

    convert file.rgb file.eps

• You should now have the Renered image in EPS form ready to include in your LaTeX document.

Figures and text along side each other

To make your text appear next to a figure without having to do freaky thing with negative space, admire and study the following example. A \parbox is your friend inside a table:

\begin{slide}
\begin{center}
  {\Large \bf Line Contact - Multigrid}
\end{center}

\begin{tabular}{ll}
        \parbox{6.0cm}{
        	\begin{itemize}
                	\item{Standard iterative methods good at\\removing high frequency
                	        errors \\relative to grid}
                	\item{Bad at removing low frequency errors relative to grid}
                	\item{Use of multiple levels of grid \\refinement accelerate
                	        convergence \\on fine grids}
        	        \item{On fine meshes more of the errors are low frequency relative to grid}
        	\end{itemize}
	}
&
        \mbox{\parbox{5.5cm}{\vspace{0.5cm}
        	\centering
        	{\em Slow single grid convergence}\\
		        \includegraphics[width=5.5cm]{sglines.eps.gz}
        	}
        }
\end{tabular}
\end{slide}

For this method you will need to setup sglines.eps.gz as follows:

• Generate file sglines.eps as usual.

•  head sglines.eps > sglines.eps.bb 

• gzip sglines.eps
• Then edit the bounding box, sglines.eps.bb, to have only the top half.

PDF

To convert a regular LaTeX document (including maths) to be easily screen renderable for talks, etc, then:

• In the preamble include
  \usepackage{times,mathptmx}
• Then latex; bibtex; latex; latex; dvips as normal
• Then load onto a machine running Acrobat Writer (eg Cytrix at the moment). Load the postscript file into Acrobat Distiller. If you want your slides automatically in landscape format using Distiller then select 'Screen' rather than 'Print'.
• The PDF file generated should now run quite happily, loading quickly and with a very much reduced size.

Note that when printing PDF files on a non-PS4 printer (ie not tsolw) then some files may need to be run through Distiller with a lower compatibilty rating. 1.3 seems to work for my problem files.

Movie making for laptop display

For a small size movie, playable on a Windows laptop use