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From: jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai  Wang)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: New dvi2ps with on-line help and continuous font sizes
Message-ID: <17924@cisunx.UUCP>
Date: 4 May 89 16:08:21 GMT
References: <17892@cisunx.UUCP> <1989May3.204353.29194@cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: jbw@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Jingbai  Wang)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 47

In article <1989May3.204353.29194@cs.rochester.edu> ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes:
>| Thus,  even  if there is only one mag set of *.*pk files, such as *.300pk in
>| your system, it can still give an acceptable output most of times  (but,  of
>| course, if scaled too much, bitmap fonts don't look good). Also, this dvi2ps
>| will make the existence of SliTeX redundant.
>
>Not quite. SliTeX has some nice features, like fiducial marks, color layers,
>etc. In any case on our systems slitex means having just one more fmt file.


I am a little confused. slitex.fmt is dumped by initex and used by virtex
to create slitex binary that will read this particular slitex.fmt when
used. slitex.sty and slitex.tex do have some things plain TeX and LaTeX
do not have, but the key point of slitex is to produce larger fonts and
blacker characters useable on overhead projector, etc..

As far as device drivers are concerned, fmt files do mean anything to them.
They have to find suitable PK (or GF or PXL) files for the fonts defined
in fmt, and some of those fonts are not commonly used by regular TeX
and LaTeX files. Thus, a fmt is not sufficient for the use of SliTeX.

Why I said this dvi2ps may make SliTeX obsolete? Try this, use TeX/LaTeX
as usual, when time comes to make slides, reduce the text body height
and widthe a little bit, by , e.g.,

\textheight=5.5in
\textwidth=4in
...


Then,

$dvi2ps -m3 foo -=

If the slides turn out to be unpresentable, let me know.

As far as colors are concerned, bitmap fonts can not change gray levels
(use half-tune fonts instead), and affordable PostScript printers
do not have colors (only gray levels that is certainly fewer than 256).
Most of Adobe fonts can be printed at gray levels (see next release
of this dvi2ps).

In academic environments, I can imagine the need to have too many fancy
features for slides, instead, time is the most precious thing. Is is
always easy to convert a LaTeX file into a SliTeX file?

JB