Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre.dsl.pitt.edu!pitt!unix.cis.pitt.edu!jbw
From: jbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Jingbai  Wang)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Is anyone using this package of dvi2ps ?
Keywords: dvi2ps
Message-ID: <19678@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 22 Sep 89 15:44:15 GMT
References: <8910@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Reply-To: jbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Jingbai  Wang)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Services
Lines: 69

In article <8910@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> jesse@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Jesse Lee) writes:
>Recently I ftp anonymously to june.cs.washington.edu
>to get this dvi2ps package: ~ftp/tex/w_dvi2ps.tar.Z.
>I am interested in that package because it advertises
>it can handle the \special commands needed for
>Trevor Darrell's psfig and handle postscript fonts.
>It also advertises it can handles pk font files.
>I follow the instructions to compile the programs
>but it doesn't look for pk fonts. It searches for
>pxl files. Our system has not used pxl font files
>anymore. So the program dies and complains certain
>pxl files are not found.
>Am I missing something to compile the program?

This version of dvi2ps has been used by many and distributed in tapes. There
are still bugs in this dvi2ps, but the ones mentioned above are not among them.

Ok. I was the one who last hacked it, and tried to promote it. Lately
I forwarded a newer version to ~/tmp in june.cs.washington.edu and everyonewho has the older version is encouraged to ftp it.

It can use cm/am-fonts in PK or PXL format (the latter is greatly discouraged),
Adobe PS-fonts, and lately Chinese fonts for the ChTeX I am developing. It
scales fonts of any type to any size (that is the font space defined in TeX
\font will certainly be filled up no matter whether you have suitable PK file
or not). It support psfig (enhanced version), \specials, and it has TeXGuide
TeX/LaTeX introduction built-in and dvi2ps.doc that you can view with
%dvi2ps -H dvi2ps
or
%dvi2ps -H tex

People, however, have difficulties installing it, because it has not direct
path definition for PK files, instead it needs PK files in a subdirectory
of where TFM files  are. The path of TFM files can be specified by the
standard TeX environment variable TEXFONTS or TFMarea in the Makefile, but
TEXFONTS has the priority. 
To view the documents, it has a special funtion gethelp (from my cdoc.c that
is in TeXGuide.tar.Z) which is to be used on ANSI terminal. To compile
on BSD, the Makefile is PK, and to compile on SUN, you need to have
-DV7 on. It also lets you use 'more' of unix to view documents, if the
terminal is defined to be non-ANSI in the Makefile.

Lately, I have been engaged in Chinese text formatting and inputing, and
a thing called ChTeX is going to be related to this dvi2ps.

After I advertised this dvi2ps many month ago on this BBoard, there was
a debate here between me and a couple of other people about its ideas. I 
mentioned the way this dvi2ps handles the font scaling, and even if you have
only one magstep of PK files in your title disk space, you can still have
presentable output despite of the missing PK files, and I also said that it
was the solution for the timebeing, if I had more time, I would backup one
step to use METAFONT to produce analytical fonts instead of PK fonts.
This idea seemed to have been echoed in one way or another in a recently
advertised dvips, but it did not go far enough. It only invokes METAFONT
to build the missing PK file when needed (still bitmap). I have no time,
it was why I expose my ideas here hoping there people can do it. Bitmap
is no friend of PostScript, and I yell again here that I hope some people
can pull out something from METAFONT so that later versions of dvi->ps will
not use PK or GF or PXL, but *.MF files directly.

This dvi2ps has bugs that includes inability of handling AMSfonts. I have
not check into it in great details, but I know that it can handle some of
the control flags (#255) for instance that are relatively new in TeX
implementation. Now I improved psfig and \special's in such a way that
it can only only handle good PostScript files, but also lousy ones.


JB Wang
jbw@pittvms.bitnet
jbw*cisunx.UUCP