NU013809@NDSUVM1.BITNET (Greg Wettstein) (10/05/89)
I have decided that TEX and the texinfo system has finally beaten me. I have brought up almost all the GNU tools under XENIX 2.3.1, I have obtained the most current TEX sources and unraveled the web and converted web to C, I have downloaded fonts ad nauseum from Nelson Beebe's machine in utah along with the epson printer driver. The problem is that I cannot for the life of me get the GNU manuals to print correctly. For example I run make.texinfo through TEX. I sort the indexes, re-run TEX and generate a .dvi file with no apparent difficulties. However when I use dvieps to generate output to my Panasonic KX-P1524 the page lengths seem to be incorrect. The title page prints satisfactorily but when the @page command is hit the paper is rolled so far forward that the copyright line ends up on the middle of the next page, this causes the last paragraph to print across the page perforation and onto the next page. If I print the first ten pages of the manual I find that some pages start too close to the top of the page ( in defiance of the one inch down, one inch left rule) while others start correctly but run over the bottom of the page. When I convert the files to INFO format the load up and everything runs correctly in GNU EMACS Version 15.54. I have a sneaky suspician that I am overlooking something obvious but for the life of me I can't figure out what that would be. I have read everything I can lay my hands but have found no references to the problem. If anybody can shed some light on this problem I would be deeply appreciative. GNU EMACS and MAKE are great but a hard-copy of the documentation to study would be even nicer. Replies either via mail or to the net would be satisfactory. Thanks in advance for any assistance that can be rendered. As always, Dr. Greg Wettstein NU013809@NDSUVM1 P.S.: I am sorry if this is a foolish question that has been answered ad nauseum but I am new to the game of text processing with TeX. It took me about a week to find out that in order to get the C version of tangle to work one had to provide an explicit cast for the first sub-script of all the two-dimensional arrays that were used. At least this was the case with the XENIX 2.3 development system. GW
bin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) (10/05/89)
From article <2881NU013809@NDSUVM1>, by NU013809@NDSUVM1.BITNET (Greg Wettstein): > I have decided that TEX and the texinfo system has finally beaten me. I > have brought up almost all the GNU tools under XENIX 2.3.1, I have obtained > the most current TEX sources and unraveled the web and converted web to C, I > have downloaded fonts ad nauseum from Nelson Beebe's machine in utah along > with the epson printer driver. The problem is that I cannot for the life of > me get the GNU manuals to print correctly. If you have nroff or troff, you can use texi2roff to churn the stuff into troff-format and print it that way. That's what I do. If you need texi2roff, contact me, I'll send it to you. It's wonnnnnnnnnnnderful. Paul DuBois dubois@primate.wisc.edu
NU013809@NDSUVM1.BITNET (Greg Wettstein) (10/07/89)
I spent the entire day yesterday on the problem and I have some additional information which may help in generating a problem fix. The problem now appears to be totally related to an improper page length. TeX seems to be functioning properly in all regards but seems to assume that the printable area is about 3 inches longer than it actually is. This problem is occuring when I printer either the GNU EMACS or GNU MAKE manual. When I print either manual the various chapter and section headings start on the top of the page in the correct position but the text always runs over the perforation and onto the next page. Printing continues downward on the next next page for about three inches and then a pagebreak is generated. The text starts at the correct position on the next page but text is again continued across the page margin and down about three inches onto the next page at which time another page break is generated. I am using Version 2.93 of TeX which was compiled from sources found on the labrea machine at stanford. I am using Nelson Beebes dvieps printer driver which I picked up from the utah machine. The lplain.tex file came from Beebes machine and the texinfo.tex is from the 18.54 release of GNU EMACS. I know that due to the complexity of TeX a thousand different things could engender this problem but the problem is so straightforward that I assume that something very simple is wrong. I know about the :vsize variable but this is set only in plain.tex which should be pristine. Does texinfo invoke some kind of scaling etc on this value that could be amiss and which could be tweaked??? Without knowing more than I do now twiddling with texinfo is kind of like trying to improve the performance of a pocket watch by randomly poking a pin into its internals, you might improve things but odds are not in your favor. The only suggestion I have received so far is to grind the manuals up with texi2roff and then process the result with [nt]roff. My goal besides getting the manuals printed is to develop some fluency with Tex(LaTeX,SliTeX) so that I can utilize for numerous other personal printing projects that I have. Backing away from TeX because I cannot get this to work would not be conducive with that goal. Besides the guantlet has been thrown down, its no longer a project but a matter of principle between myself, TeX, texinfo and the computer. Anybody around the business for awhile will know what I am talking about...... Any suggestions would be deeply appreciated. Once I get a handle on whats going on I will summarize back to comp.text. Hopefully someone at a later time may find the results useful. Thanks in advance for any forthcoming assistance. As always, G.W. Dr. G.W. Wettstein |"The truest mark of a Man's wisdom is his ability to listen NU013809@NDSUVM1 |to other men expound their wisdom."
les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (10/09/89)
In article <2894NU013809@NDSUVM1> NU013809@NDSUVM1.BITNET (Greg Wettstein) writes: >I spent the entire day yesterday on the problem and I have some additional >information which may help in generating a problem fix. The problem now >appears to be totally related to an improper page length. TeX seems to >be functioning properly in all regards but seems to assume that the printable >area is about 3 inches longer than it actually is. This problem is occuring >when I printer either the GNU EMACS or GNU MAKE manual. If you are using the epson dvi driver and a non-epson printer, the problem may be in the printer's handling of the vertical motion commands. I've seen something like this on a Gemini printer before, where the vertical motions are about a third larger than epson's. Les Mikesell
rusty@garnet.berkeley.edu (10/11/89)
Within the tex distribution, somewhere in the latex part is a file testpage.tex. Try printing it. The top margin should be 1 inch and the left margin should be 1 inch. If not then it's probably your dvi driver. Also find any \hoffset and \voffset commands in the gnu .texinfo files and comment them out and see if that is any better. By default the gnu emacs manual uses really wacky formatting with gobs of vertical space between paragraphs but I don't remember the margins or text/page height being screwed up. -- -------------------------------------- rusty c. wright rusty@violet.berkeley.edu ucbvax!violet!rusty