Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!csn!news!grunwald From: grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: tex dvi Previewer for Xwindows Message-ID: <1991Jan9.221743.362@csn.org> Date: 9 Jan 91 22:17:43 GMT References: <139@dogmelb.dog.oz.au> Sender: news@csn.org Reply-To: grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu Followup-To: comp.text.tex Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder Lines: 52 In-Reply-To: smith@zeus.harvard.edu's message of 9 Jan 91 16:17:41 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: foobar.colorado.edu >>>>> On 9 Jan 91 16:17:41 GMT, smith@zeus.harvard.edu (Steven Smith) said: SS> I agree with Andreas Stolcke (Article 4886) that the inconvenience of SS> X fonts makes xdvi more attractive than xtex. There is one point, SS> however, on which I am uncertain. SS> The previewer dvipage, which unfortunately runs only on SunView, SS> produces the crispest display I have seen. It substitutes spatial SS> resolution for grey scale resolution by passing the binary text image SS> through a low pass filter, creating a highly readable display. I know SS> that xdvi does not utilize such a filter and consequently its display SS> is inferior to dvipage. Does xtex employ such a trick? Does anyone -- Xtex is currently limited by the X font implementation, which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't implement font depths other than 1. SS> know if there is a DVI previewer that SS> 1) runs on X/SUN SS> 2) reads GF/PK files, SS> 3) provides grey scale resolution SS> and maybe SS> 4) reads VF files (allowing one to preview a document set in SS> PostScript fonts) -- I've toyed with putting the ability to read GF/PK/PXL fonts back into xtex, since the other solution I was hoping for (X font server that could read PK files) appears to be rather distant. The main reason I avoided doing this in xtex is the ``shrunken'' fonts usually don't look very good. I had intended to improve the shrinking code in mftobdf using a jitter-filter or poisson filter, but have not done so yet. If I do put the the PK/GF code into xtex, the font code would still be used as well. This would allow you to convert your most common fonts to X format and still use the less common ones. As for VF fonts; sadly, no, I haven't done this in xtex/texsun yet, but someone did mail me an X font alias list that lets you use the Adobe fonts for previewing. And, with Display Postscript hosts, you preview postscript figures in 'xtex'. xtex is available from foobar.colorado.edu:pub/SeeTeX/SeeTeX-2.16.1.tar.Z Dirk Grunwald -- Univ. of Colorado at Boulder (grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu) (grunwald@boulder.colorado.edu)