jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai Wang) (05/02/89)
As I said, I have a version of dvi2ps to release. For those who can wait
I put it in ~/tmp anonymous (password=guest) june.cs.washington.edu for
ftp. It is in .arc format (sorry about that). To unarc it, use
$arc dvi2ps
$sh unarc.sh
This program has many features that never existed before this date. The
following is part of the dvi2ps.doc in the package.
_________________________
1. Description and Syntax
dvi2ps is a popular TeX dvi->PostScript device driver (or translator)
(PostScript is a trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc) for UNIX systems. This
program converts a TeX DVI file to PostScript, and writes the result to a
more standard output.
However, this particular version of dvi2ps is not the same as the ones that
are already in many sites. THIS dvi2ps IS ONE OF THE FEW PostScript
TRANSLATORS THAT DO THINGS THAT CAN BE CALLED PostScript. The following
features make this program unique.
- All the fonts, including raster-type bitmap fonts (like cmfonts)
and built-in Adobe fonts (like Times-Roman), can be scaled on
continuous basis. For instance,
\font\cmrforty=cmr17 at 40pt
\cmrforty{The font size is exacty 40 points.}
will give 40 points fonts of cmfonts in Roman.
- It has three \special features to allow you to include PostScript
files of any kind, such as well-behaved PostScript file with
bounding box (with \psfig), poor nonstandard PostScript files
(with \special{psfile filename}), and full-page/multi-page
PostScript image files (with \special{pspage filename}).
- You can use PostScript commands directly in your TeX/LaTeX with
\special{ps-string PostScript commands}.
- This dvi2ps is has a built-in on-line help viewer for ANSI
terminals. The help files available with the package are
dvi2ps.doc (this file) and texint.doc (Introduction to TeX/LaTeX).
To view the former, use
$dvi2ps -H
and for the latter, use,
$dvi2ps -H tex
- This program uses TeX fonts (like cmfonts) in PK format (such as
cmr10.300pk for cmr10, 300 dpi at mag=1000), and built-in Adobe
fonts that only need TFM files (such as t-rom.tfm for Times-Roman
font). They can all be used at any point size. When TeX fonts are
used, the closest PK file will be loaded and if the size is not
exactly the same as specified by TFM file, PostScript scaling is
used to scale the font. PXL files can also be used, but greatly
discouraged.
- It can look for PK files in predefined system directory and(not
or) user's directory.
- ...
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.
Example: the simplest syntax is,
$dvi2ps foo.dvi>foo.ps
1.1 SYNOPSIS
$dvi2ps [-=] [-H tex/latex/dvi2ps] [-a pxldirs] [-d] [-f n] [-h] [-i file]
[-m n] [-o str] [-q] [-r] [-s] [-t n] [-F n] [-x pages] [-K userfontpath]
[-M] dvifile[.dvi]
...
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Description and Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 SYNOPSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 ARGUMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Adobe Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Specials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Greek Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. FILES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. See Also . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
9. AUTHOR(s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
__________________________
JB Wang
p.s. A newer version with more features may be released soon.ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (05/04/89)
| Thus, even if there is only one mag set of *.*pk files, such as *.300pk in | your system, it can still give an acceptable output most of times (but, of | course, if scaled too much, bitmap fonts don't look good). Also, this dvi2ps | will make the existence of SliTeX redundant. Not quite. SliTeX has some nice features, like fiducial marks, color layers, etc. In any case on our systems slitex means having just one more fmt file.
knapp@cs.utexas.edu (Edgar Knapp) (05/04/89)
In article <17892@cisunx.UUCP> jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai Wang) writes: >[..] >ftp. It is in .arc format (sorry about that). To unarc it, use >$arc dvi2ps >$sh unarc.sh > Neither arc nor unarc are available on our local UNIX machines. Are they public domain, and if so, can I ftp them from somewhere? What do these programs do, anyway? Some sort of arc-hiving or compresssion? Edgar Knapp (knapp@cs.utexas.edu)
jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai Wang) (05/04/89)
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
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (05/05/89)
|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.. At this site virtex, tex, latex, and slitex are all links to one file. All that is needed to run slitex is slitex.fmt (a.k.a. splain.fmt). |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. No, of course not. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. But the disk space taken is negligible especially as it is spread over all the workstations served by one file server. Here is the disk usage for slitex fonts: 943 pk Actually this is an overestimate because this includes lasy, line and circle fonts. A mere 1 Mb. |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). The color layers of SliTeX are for overlays, not color printers. Overlays can be used independent of whether you actually have color transparencies. We can also use the Adobe fonts in our dvi2ps. Both features are useful. |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? Fiducial marks are very useful when you want to quickly align overlaid slides. Slides are usually done separately anyway because of the telegraphic style of communication. It is generally a mistake to put more than 10 to 12 lines of text on a slide and some people would say even that is too much. So many times I have seen illegible tables of results at presentations. Who can read those anyway? Make graphs or say "trust me, I did get these results". So making a slide file afresh is easier than trying to reuse some nice sentences out of the paper. Besides using standard slitex saves maintainers time because we don't have to document how to bend latex to do slides. Slitex is documented in the book. I'm not saying magnified and/or PS fonts are a bad thing, but it isn't necessary to promote them by saying that you do away with slitex. Our ditroff users use 24-36 pt ditroff fonts for slides and they are happy too.
jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai Wang) (05/05/89)
In article <5457@cs.utexas.edu> knapp@cs.utexas.edu (Edgar Knapp) writes: >In article <17892@cisunx.UUCP> jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai Wang) writes: >>[..] >>ftp. It is in .arc format (sorry about that). To unarc it, use >>$arc dvi2ps >>$sh unarc.sh >> >Neither arc nor unarc are available on our local UNIX machines. Are >they public domain, and if so, can I ftp them from somewhere? > >What do these programs do, anyway? Some sort of arc-hiving or >compresssion? > >Edgar Knapp > >(knapp@cs.utexas.edu) I think arc or pkarc are public domain or at list shareware. They work almost exactly the same way as PKARC and PKXARC on DOS PC, and the *.arc file I had can be down-loaded to PC to unarc. (PKARC are freely distributed and can be ftped from many sites like simtel20.arpa, but I do not know about unix one, for VMS there is a ZOO). However, you do not need that trouble for dvi2ps and TeXGuide, since I made the .tar.Z files, and they are also in ~/tmp anonymous, june.cs.washington.edu. Those .tar.Z files are more up to the date than the *.arc files too. To handle these files, ftp in binary mode, and $uncompress *.Z $tar -xmf dvi2ps ... JB Wang
jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai Wang) (05/06/89)
... >At this site virtex, tex, latex, and slitex are all links to one file. >All that is needed to run slitex is slitex.fmt (a.k.a. splain.fmt). That's a kind of strange setup, but by-and-by. >space taken is negligible especially as it is spread over all the >workstations served by one file server. Here is the disk usage >for slitex fonts: > >943 pk > >Actually this is an overestimate because this includes lasy, line and >circle fonts. A mere 1 Mb. Your SliTeX might not be the most up to the date. My resent experience seem to indicate taht i*.tfm files are also used in SliTeX. splain.fmt and slitex binary seem to be the biggest files among TeX/LaTeX package. Disk space is indeed cheap nowadays. It is why TeX can afford PK files at numerous mag steps. Older fashioned packages would magnify each individual pixels (which can not reduce font size and may make large fonts ugly), instead of Metafont's way to scale (linearly) the character contour and refill it with new bitmap. But, no one can afford the the disk space for fonts from 1pt size to 1000pt size, say 1pt as the step. Try your dvi2ps (not my version) with \font\Rfive=cmr10 at 5pt \font\Rseven=cmr10 at 7pt \font\Rten=cmr10 \font\Rtwelve=cmr10 at 12pt ... \font\Rxxvi=cmr10 at 24pt \font\Rxxx=cmr10 at 30pt \Rfive{ cmfonts at 5pt } \Rseven{ cmfonts at 7pt } \Rten{ cmfonts at 10pt } \Rtwelve{ cmfonts at 12pt } ... \Rxxvi{ cmfonts at 24pt } \Rxxx{ cmfonts at 30pt } \end And, then try mine. Of course, this is not a clever way of using fonts, for instance, for 5pt you might use "cmr5 at magstep0" instead of cmr10 at 5pt (that's what people said about nonlinearity). The example is just to show that no one can have ALL the PK files for all the fonts. >Slides are usually done separately anyway because of the telegraphic >style of communication. It is generally a mistake to put more than 10 >to 12 lines of text on a slide and some people would say even that is >too much. That's too bad, too time consuming and frustrating. >So many times I have seen illegible tables of results at >presentations. Who can read those anyway? ... Indeed, but users would not read a book on how to make efficient slides. >Besides using standard slitex saves maintainers time because we don't ... Our sites have hesitated on supporting SliTeX, we can't affort a whole crew of system analysts supporting everything from TeX tape. But a device driver is must. >ditroff users use 24-36 pt ditroff fonts for slides and they are happy >too. That's right, no one needs to be taught to make slides as long as he can get visible fonts when projected (the result of presentation is a separate topic). SliTeX is a recognized piece of work. I did not try to promote this verison of dvi2ps by doing way with it. This is only a dvi->ps, SliTeX can be used for many many other devices. In the mean time, it is worth pointing out many features in SliTeX can be defined in TeX and LaTeX as well. My point, really, is that PostScript printers should be made better use of by taking advantage of its powerful page description features. Scaling bitmap fonts is only a remedy, and it works most of times and produces much much better results than the best-substituted fonts ( as most of dvi derivers do -- try the TeX code shown above). However, if I could find time, I would get rid of bitmap fonts completely for PostScript, and merge MetaFont program and *.base into the device driver to make analytical TeX fonts on top of Adobe fonts. JB Wang
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (05/06/89)
|>At this site virtex, tex, latex, and slitex are all links to one file. |>All that is needed to run slitex is slitex.fmt (a.k.a. splain.fmt). | |That's a kind of strange setup, but by-and-by. | |>space taken is negligible especially as it is spread over all the |>workstations served by one file server. Here is the disk usage |>for slitex fonts: |> |>943 pk |> |>Actually this is an overestimate because this includes lasy, line and |>circle fonts. A mere 1 Mb. | |Your SliTeX might not be the most up to the date. My resent experience |seem to indicate taht i*.tfm files are also used in SliTeX. splain.fmt and |slitex binary seem to be the biggest files among TeX/LaTeX package. As I mentioned, slitex is the same as virtex. -rwxr-xr-x 4 ken 163840 Apr 15 06:02 /usr/staff/bin/slitex And it's even big TeX, with over 250k memory words. The beauty of on-the-fly loading. As for the fmt file: -rw-r--r-- 2 ken 539245 Apr 15 21:05 /usr/lib/tex/macros/slitex.fmt The tfm files are only about 1k each and there are only 10 or 20 of them. All this has been standard since about 2.93 or so I think. |>Besides using standard slitex saves maintainers time because we don't ... | |Our sites have hesitated on supporting SliTeX, we can't affort a whole |crew of system analysts supporting everything from TeX tape. But a device |driver is must. A whole crew of SAs? Oh dear, I must be underpaid. :-) To make a slitex after having made the initex and virtex binaries, initex splain '\dump' ln splain.fmt slitex.fmt ln virtex slitex rdist as necessary All of 3 minutes. And I don't have to recompile initex and virtex if Lamport changes SliTeX, only if Knuth upgrades tex.web. |Scaling bitmap fonts is only a remedy, and it works most of times and |produces much much better results than the best-substituted fonts ( |as most of dvi derivers do -- try the TeX code shown above). However, |if I could find time, I would get rid of bitmap fonts completely for |PostScript, and merge MetaFont program and *.base into the device driver |to make analytical TeX fonts on top of Adobe fonts. No disagreement here. Turning to more interesting topics perhaps you can tell us how you smooth the scaled bitmap fonts (I assume you do). It would be a nice thing for future dvi2ps's to have. Sideline: There was a lot discussion on TeXHax a while back on METAFONT vs PS. What more or less emerged from the dust is that one can see the difference in quality between MF's tailored fonts and PS's optically scaled fonts if one is fussy. Indeed, I can see some ugliness in the lower point sized PS fonts. But the pressure of wanting to save on disk space is in favour of PS fonts at the moment. It remains to be seen if some new storage proposals can retain the quality of MF fonts with a single font description, a la PS.
jbw@cisunx.UUCP (Jingbai Wang) (05/08/89)
In article <1989May5.230959.19926@cs.rochester.edu> ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes: >The tfm files are only about 1k each and there are only 10 or 20 of them. Once tfm are preloaded in *.fmt, there is no importance for its existence unless some smart users would use them by \font command. The key point is that for a single TFM file, there need to be a dozen of PK files at different mag's for device drivers to use. >A whole crew of SAs? Oh dear, I must be underpaid. :-) To make a slitex >after having made the initex and virtex binaries, ... >All of 3 minutes. Supporting does not solely mean setting up the binaries and path. In a university as big as ours, there can be thousands of users, smart, dull or in between. They ask you all kinds of questions, especially because they can get nothing out of Knuth's books. Consulting is much more important here than maintenance. It is why I was asked to write TeXGuide.tar.Z. >No disagreement here. Turning to more interesting topics perhaps you >can tell us how you smooth the scaled bitmap fonts (I assume you do). >It would be a nice thing for future dvi2ps's to have. Actually I have only done the best to the availability of time, for the time being this version of dvi2ps does not smooth the scaled bitmap fonts, instead, it finds the bitmap font of closest size to reduce scaling factor to minimum possible. As far as I can see, the results are so far so good. There was a conference here, people try to make Posters MEN's --> Ladies <-- the font size should be no less than 480pt. Then this version of dvi2ps was not ready yet. I told them to forget about TeX, use Scribe instead. In this particular case, smoothness is not so important. >Sideline: There was a lot discussion on TeXHax a while back on METAFONT >vs PS. What more or less emerged from the dust is that one can see the >difference in quality between MF's tailored fonts and PS's optically >scaled fonts if one is fussy. Indeed, I can see some ugliness in the >lower point sized PS fonts. But the pressure of wanting to save on disk >space is in favour of PS fonts at the moment. It remains to be seen if >some new storage proposals can retain the quality of MF fonts with a >single font description, a la PS. Sure, I remember that, and I actually critisized it. Adobe could have suited them for spreading their unthoughtful remarks. Actually most of Adobe fonts are not bitmap fonts, they are either outline fonts or stroke fonts (like Courier). Scaling is done analytically (by computing) the contours first, and then fill the interiors with grids (instead of dots). If you want to see more primary fonts of this type, check out DISSPLA and TEL-A-GRAF vector fonts (when you use a plotter with pen movements, vector fonts are the best) which in turn appeared in Turbo Pascal (exactly the same vectors as far as I can see). Of course, the plotter do not fill the interiors, but printers can (and so can the screen display as in Turbo Pascal). Adobe fonts are not optically scaled as would a Xerox copier. MF uses about the same principle. In other words, cmr10.300pk, cmr10.360pk, cmr10.432pk, ..., are generated from the same description of font outlines, but the dimensions are different and the bitmap information is different. Some people said Adobe fonts are linearly scaled (and hence ugly), and MF is not (and thus beautiful). I could not see any non-linearity from cmr10.300pk to cmr10.360pk, but of course, cmr10.300pk and cmr12.300pk are not proportional to each other. Well, I do not feel it is the right comparison, this is really like comparing Times-Roman with Helvetica, because strictly speaking cmr10 and cmr12 do not have the same font style. Returning to the smoothing issue, there are standard methods to smooth curves (see Numerical Recipe) that can be used to smooth font contours, but it is not smart to pick up the data from PK files to make such outline fonts. Instead, one has to come one step back to MF itself. I personally use Scribe to write everything, because font support is good and I have my own version of database. I once communicated with Leslie Lamport for a while, he does not seem to favor TeX fonts either and he advised me to devote time to support Adobe fonts instead. When you feel that the small Adobe fonts appeared ugly, that's because you are misled by those messages. JB