Microsoft Word processor issues

Use the template file

The simplest way to start is to use the Word template which is available at the tool repository of this site. If no automatic typesetting is possible for you, please consult the official IFAC guidelines for manuscript preparation at the IFAC-Elsevier publications site:

You may also like to check the explicit >manuscript specifications or verify the IFAC checklist for all final paper submissions.

Use only valid type 1 or True Type fonts

Make sure that you use the times (type 1) or times new roman (True Type) font for the text of your paper. You may also need some other fonts, such as courier or courier new (for typeset programming code), or Symbol (for mathematics), but do not use any other fonts apart from the above ones. Please restrict the character set of your paper file to the ASCII or the ISO Latin-1 subset.

NOTE: Including non-standard fonts is one of the primary sources of poor PDF performance. Please check carefully that your file does not contain any font which is not included in the set of allowed fonts for IFAC manuscripts. Notice that Word may include non standard fonts in some information items not directly visible in your manuscript (e.g. author name or affiliation).

Generating a Postscript or PDF file from your Word manuscript

If you have the Acrobat software, the recommended procedure is to directly produce a PDF file with Acrobat Distiller. Otherwise the way to proceed is to produce a PostScript (ps) and submit it.

Generating a PDF file

Acrobat 4 includes two different utilities for creating PDF files: PDFWriter and Distiller. PDF Maker is a Word macro that uses PDFWriter or Distiller to create PDf files from Word documents. Acrobat 5 has a different version of PDFMaker that always uses Distiller. Both PDFWriter (only in Acrobat 4) and Distiller are configured as printer devices in Windows systems.

We recommend you to always use Distiller to create your PDF file.

Configuring Distiller

You should configure Distiller to use the Adobe Postscript (AdobePS) driver, and send TrueType fonts as Native True Type fonts (Windows NT, Windows 2000) or type 42 fonts (Windows 98, Windows 95). See the Adobe technical notes for Acrobat 4.x and for Acrobat 5.0 for the details.

Creating a PDF file using PDF Maker

You can create a PDF file with PDFMaker in two ways:

• Click on the Convert to PDF icon on the Word toolbar, or
• Choose Convert to PDF in the Acrobat menu.

Make sure that the following options are selected:

• Optimize for print.
• Acrobat 3 (PDF 1.2) compatibility.
• Embed all fonts .
• Subset embedded fonts to 100%

NOTE: If you are using Acrobat 4 or higher, you should set Distiller as the default printer for PDFMaker (see the Adobe technical notes for Acrobat 4 and Acrobat 5).

Creating a PDF file using Distiller

Print the file to the Distiller printer. You should choose the optimize for print option and Acrobat 3 (PDF 1.2) compatibility. Be sure that Embed all fonts and Subset embedded fonts to 100% are selected.

Generating a PostScript file

If you do not have Acrobat Distiller, you should submit your paper as a Postscript file. To do this, you need to have a Postscript printer driver installed. Any driver that can generate Postscript level 1 can be used, but the recommendation is to use the AdobePS driver.

Configuring your Postscript driver

Your driver should be attached to a local port (LPx), and have the following options set:

• Optimize for portability.
• Enable Adobe Document Structuring Conventions (ADSC or just DSC) (this may be included in the "optimize for portability" option).
• Select PostScript Level 1.
• ASCII data format.
• Resolution of 600 dpi.
• Enable Page independence.
• Disable job codes (Control-D).
• Send True Type fonts as outlines

Do not use font substitution tables or conversion to built-in printer fonts. If possible, it is better to use only standard PostScript fonts (such as Times, Courier, or Symbol) in your manuscript.

Where to get the tools