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UKIRT Proposals: tips on Science & Tech Case Preparation

Preparing Science and Technical Cases for NorthStar at UKIRT

To maintain maximum control over your page layouts, we recommend that you generate your science and technical cases (and figs/references page) as single-page PDF files first and then upload them individually to the NorthStar submission system.

PDF Generation

Linux/Unix

Once the document is saved as a PostScript file (usually generated by either the "Print to File"-type options available under most word processors, or dvips filename > filename.ps if using LaTeX), then the command ps2pdf filename should produce a suitable PDF file.

Mac OS X

This should be trivial, as Mac OS X natively supports PDFs, and includes a "Print to PDF" option at the OS level for all applications. LaTeX document preparation environments on Macs, such as TeXShop, automatically generate a PDF file for on-screen viewing purposes.

Windows

Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007 also have native PDF support, as does OpenOffice.org. Earlier versions of MS Windows and MS Office usually require a third-party software solution. A quick web search for "Windows PDF generation" should provide links to a number of possible options, commercial and free (in both senses).

LaTeX

If you are using LaTeX to prepare your science and technical cases, then you may wish to try using the following as a template. Although testing on the following text has been somewhat limited, and it is therefore provided as is without support by either UKIRT or NorthStar, it has been previously used to successfully prepare submittable UKIRT Service proposals.

% Example LaTeX commands to generate a NorthStar justification ps file
\documentclass[legal,11pt]{article}
\oddsidemargin=-0.54cm
\evensidemargin=-0.54cm
\topmargin=-1.2cm
\textwidth=17cm
\textheight=25cm
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
% TEXT OF JUSTIFICATION HERE
\end{document}

Note that the above \documentclass parameters have been slightly modified from the example provided by the NorthStar team themselves, in order to ensure 11-point text and the use of the U.S. Legal paper size.

Once your document is correctly prepared, on most *nix machines, the following should produce a usable PDF file from the LaTeX file foo.tex :

latex foo.tex
dvips foo > foo.ps
ps2pdf foo.ps

This should produce a file called foo.pdf which may be uploaded to NorthStar. You should ensure that the resultant file does not exceed a single page, or it will be rejected by the submission system.

For the figures and references page, we suggest the use of psfig, as in the following example:

%Example LaTeX commands to generate a NorthStar justification ps file
% Allows both epsf and psfig
% If you have no figures you can delete ,psfig in the documentstyle below
% If you prefer to use epsf replace the ,psfig by ,epsf in the documentstyle below

\documentstyle[11pt,psfig]{article}
\oddsidemargin=-0.54cm
\evensidemargin=-0.54cm
\topmargin=-1.2cm
\textwidth=17cm
\textheight=25cm
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}

\noindent{\bf References} \\
Author,1., Author,2., Author,3., 2007 MNRAS {\bf vol}, nnn.\\
Author,4., Author,5., Author,6., 2008 ApJ {\bf vol}, nnn.\\
Author,7., Author,8., Author,8., 2007 A\&A {\bf vol}, nnn.\\
 
\vspace*{0.1in}

\psfig{file=112jhk.ps,angle=0,width=5in}
{\bf Figure 1} Figure caption text goes here.\\

\end{document}

You can retrieve the psfig style file here.
The encapsulated postscript figure file used in the above example is here.

Go back to main NorthStar submission notes

MGR, AJA - 2007,2008

Contact: Andy Adamson. Updated: Mon Mar 10 20:57:12 HST 2008

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