Many of the handouts that I distribute in my courses are available either from the course's web page or from the appropriate directory on ACS. Here is a quick summary of how you can go about obtaining copies of these handouts.

File format: Short handouts will be available both in postscript format and as "gifs." The resolution of the documents in gif format is not optimal, but the ability to view gifs is built into most web browsers. Therefore you can read a handout in gif format just by clicking on it in a web browser such as Netscape or MS Internet Explorer.

Longer documents will be available only in postscript format.

Obtaining copies of handouts in postscript format: Postscript files give you nice looking documents, but you will have to do a little work to get your hands on them. Here are some suggestions:

1. One of the most straightforward ways to get a copy of a handout in postscript format (a ".ps" file) is to log into one of the computers in the ACS network. Once you are logged in, you can access our course directory using the command

      cd ~paul/226
   

   Don't forget the tilde, and don't leave a space between the tilde and paul. ~paul is UNIX notation for my home directory. Then the command

      ls
   

   will tell you the names of all the files in our course directory. To print the file named 1999exams.ps, you use the command

      lpr 1999exams.ps
   

   This command will print the postscript file on one of the ACS printers. You can probably pick up your output at the I/O window for ACS in the basement of 111 Cummington Street. If you want to see your print job in the (usually long) ACS print queue, you can use the command

      lpq
   

   For additional help regarding printing from ACS, see the web page http://www.bu.edu/computing/acs/help.

2. If you are sitting at one of the nice bitmapped terminals on ACS, you can preview and print postscript files using the ghostview postscript previewer. For example, you can change directories to our course directory as described in Option 1 and type

      ghostview 1999exams.ps &
   

   Ghostview will preview the document for you, and you can print from ghostview's file menu if you want a hardcopy. The lpq command described above will help you know when your print job is done.

3. Web browsers can be configured to automatically open ghostview if you click on a link that is really a postscript file. You may need some help from the help desk to get this to work, but if you are going to be accessing the web via ACS, then it is definitely worth the effort.

4. There is a public domain version of ghostview that you can get for your home computer. There are links to it from our course home page. If you install ghostview on your home computer, then you can repeat Option 3 at home. Postscript files tend to be large, so it takes some time to download them over a modem. However this option will be the most convenient once you get everything installed and configured correctly. Installation and configuration may be difficult, but the Personal Computing Support Center (PCSC) in the basement of 111 Cummington Street may be able to help you.

Last revision: September 3, 2000