A Note About Formats

Many of the items available from my Astronomy 162 page are provided in "postscript" format. Postscript documents can be printed on a postscript printer and viewed on screen using programs such as "ghostview." If you transfer and print the postscript version of a document, it will usually be identical to the form that I deposited at COP-EZ and/or handed out in class.

Not everyone has access to postscript viewers and printers, so to the extent that I can, I am also providing documents in "html" format, which is the standard format for the World Wide Web. Any web browser should be able to view documents in this format and print them with the "print" command.

The main obstacle to putting my lecture notes in html format is that html does not conveniently handle equations or Greek letters. If you go for the html format, therefore, you will find that the equations are not formatted very elegantly, and that Greek letters are spelled out and placed inside single quotation marks in order to identify them (e.g., the Greek letter pi is written as `pi').

The bottom line is: if you have the computer tools to view or print postscript, get the postscript versions. If you don't, get the html versions, and be careful about the equations.


Go to the Astronomy 162 page

Updated: 1997 January 11 [dhw]