It should work on any platform that has a proper installation of LaTeX. If you place the a0poster-isc07.cls file in a directory named path-to-dir, you must tell LaTeX that there are cls files available at that location. Under Linux (under Windows I don't know), and with tcsh, type the following in the command line:
% setenv TEXINPUTS ::path-to-dir
with bash:
% export TEXINPUTS=::path-to-dir
You can put the relevant line above in either your .tcshrc or .bashrc file, if you don't want to execute the command every time you open a new terminal. If you put the cls file in the same directory you develop the poster, path-to-dir can be just '.'. In other words: relative paths do work, you don't need the full path.
You have a sample.tex file in the download section. There is also a Perl script to automate the compilation, but you don't need to use it. Just edit sample.tex to your liking, and then compile with:
% compile.pl sample.tex
The compile.pl script assumes you have the Evince PDF reader installed. If not, edit compile.pl accordingly. Or, better yer, install Evince :^)
You can make use of different environments and structures to build up your poster. These are the ones a0poster-isc07 makes available for you:
The command \background generates a color gradient for the background of your poster. You should put it right after \begin{document}. Its syntax is as follows:
\background{R1 G1 B1}{R2 G2 B2}{M}{A}
The meaning being:
wholeposter is a simple \minipage environment to hold all the poster except the footer. Just put all your stuff between \begin{wholeposter} and \end{wholeposter}.
posterbody is meant to hold all of the contents of wholeposter, except the header (see below). It accepts a single argument, denoting the width, as a fraction of the whole width of the paper. In the sample file I distribute, for example, this is a 94.5% of the whole width:
\begin{posterbody}{0.945}
[...]
\end{posterbody}
A environment to create a box with the header (title, authors...). The syntax is:
\begin{header}{R1 G1 B1}{S}{R2 G2 B2}{W}
Your header stuff goes here.
\end{header}
The meaning being:
MultiCol is the environment controling in how many columns you organize the poster boxes, and pcolumn is a environment to hold each column. The syntax is:
\begin{MultiCol}{N}{X}
\begin{pcolumm}{\pcolw}
your column stuff goes here
\end{pcolumn}
[...]
\end{MultiCol}
The meaning being:
You should include as many pcolumn environments as columns you wish, including an ampersand (&) between each two pcolumns, as in any regular tabular environment.
pcolumn accepts a single argument, denoting its width. If you want automatically sized columns (all equal), leave it as "\pcolw". Alternatively, you can play with different values for this variable (not recommended, unless you know what you're doing).
This environment is the heart of the poster. It is used to create every content box that appears there. I advice to make every box a single file, and then to \input it in the main LaTeX file. The syntax is:
\begin{PosterBox}{title}
Your poster box stuff goes here
\end{PosterBox}
Where "title" is the title you want for the poster box, and it can be any valid LaTeX text construct. The contents inside the box can be whatever, including floats, equations, and all the stuff.