Print LaTeX in 8.5x11 inch format

Question

Linux defaults to A4 paper size rather than letter. The only answer I found online was to run pdflatex with the -t flag.

$ pdflatex -t letter myfile.tex

but I get the error:

warning: Could not open char translation file `letter.tcx'.

The first line of my file is

\documentclass[margin,line]{res}

because I'm using someone else's template, found here: http://www.terpconnect.umd.edu/~briankw/resources/resume.cls.

How can I make 8.5x11 inch pdf's with latex, and still use this template?

Answer 1

There's no -t option for selecting the paper format as is the case for dvips; but pdflatex knows the option -translate-file and accepts abbreviations for options, as long as they are unambiguous: thus that cryptic warning.

All TeX distributions I know of, set A4 as the default page size for PDF files generated by pdftex or pdflatex. This can be modified at installation time.

A good solution is to say

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[pass]{geometry}

that exploits geometry's features to pass the paper size to pdflatex without modifying the standard page make up parameters. It's not necessary to say

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[pass]{geometry}

because letterpaper is a default option; but it doesn't hurt, either.

Of course, any class can be used in place of article:

\documentclass[optionone,optiontwo]{myclass}
\usepackage[pass]{geometry}

Just add the geometry line after the class declaration.

Answer 2

Most document classes accept options to modify the page size to fit any standard paper size, e.g.:

\documentclass[b5paper]{report}

If you convert then to PDF, it might happen that the page is typeset correctly, but the paper size is different. To avoid this, you can insert into your preamble:

\pdfpagewidth=\paperwidth
\pdfpageheight=\paperheight

This tells pdfLaTeX to match the paper and the page size.