A0-poster

Creating posters in A0-size with LaTex - a short introduction:
For the creation of a scientific poster in LaTex, we will use the a0poster class (v1.21c, extended by me from v1.21b), which was original designed by G.Kettl and M.Weiser from Regensburg. A short describtion of this class and its style files is available in german and english.

Please download the following files:

  • a0poster.cls and a0header.ps - the A0-poster header- and class-file (v1.21c)
  • a0size.sty - the style-file for the correct sizes
  • ...and you need the multicol, pstricks and pst-grad packages.
For an example, you can have a look into poster.tex, where all important things are shown (figures, equations, bibliography,...). Please download also gklogo.eps and poster.bib to compile this poster with:

  • latex poster.tex
  • bibtex poster
  • latex poster.tex
  • latex poster.tex

  • dvips -Ppdf poster.dvi -o poster.ps
  • ps2pdf poster.ps poster.pdf

  • gv poster.ps
  • acroread poster.pdf
...you will get this postscript file poster.ps and this pdf-file poster.pdf. If you want to print your poster in A4-format (this is the new option in v1.21c: "a4resizeable"), you just have to place:

  • \documentclass[landscape,a0b,final,a4resizeable]{a0poster}  in your first line of your tex-file
  • after compiling, run the program:  psresize -W595 -H842 poster.ps poster-a4.ps
  • Then replace in "poster-a4.ps" the line:  %%BoundingBox: 0 0 2594 3402  with  %%BoundingBox: 0 0 595 842

Important!

Please be sure to have these versions of latex and dvips installed, otherwise you will get rotated posters etc.:

  • > latex --version
    TeX (Web2C 7.3.7) 3.14159
    kpathsea version 3.3.7
    ...

  • > dvips --version
    dvips(k) 5.86e
    kpathsea version 3.3.7
    ...

Printing on a linux machine:

Before printing, you should be 100% sure, that this is the right postscript-file you want to print. Since "gv" (GhostView) has sometimes problems with displaying A0-Posters, you can use the following command to view your poster:

gs -r15x15 poster.ps

With this command, you tell GhostScript directly to display the file poster.ps with a resolution of 15x15dpi on your screen. You should see the following output:


Since a plotter expect a landscape posters as a portrait postscript file, but rotated by 90° (as shown above with the command "gs"), you must have a postscript file as this one shown here! This is correct as far as I know and my experiences tells me that... believe me, we have experimented a lot...! To print now the poster, we at the University in Regensburg, are using qtcups. When using the following options for a landscape poster, you will get the correct poster out of the plotter:

  • Start  qtcups myposter.ps  and select as printer "pl2" (HP DesignJet 2500CP)
  • Properties -> General: "Portrait" and "Oversize A0"
  • Properties -> Text: "Use custom margins" (2.7,2.7,1.8,1.8 cm)
  • Properties -> HP-GL/2: "Fit plot to page"
  • Properties -> Advanced -> Extra: "Scale to: Oversize A0"
I hope this will help you. Good Luck!

An example of a scientific poster created with this style-file can be downloaded as pdf.



You can get other helpful advices for poster creation from: Regensburg, Glasgow, Augsburg and Kiel.