00prneubauer@bsu-ucs.uucp (Paul Neubauer) (02/13/91)
In article <BED63CC7861F60031B@qucdnee.ee.QueensU.CA>, RICK@QUCDNEE.BITNET (Rick Pim) writes: > i installed the 1990 DECUS TeX distribution on our cluster the > other day. it looks like a very nice piece of work, and so far pretty > much everything seems to be working. the only problem i've encountered > so far has to do with the dviln03 command. > > i have the pk directories arranged just as they are in the saveset; so > i have tex_pkdir defined as tex_disk:[tex.fonts.] , but when i > attempt to process a dvi file, i get > > This is DVItoLN03, Vax/VMS Version 3.1-4 > (USER_DISC2:[RICK]SYSTEMSJOBS2.DVI;1 > Total of 0 bytes of rasters downloaded > [1 > Error: character 68 invalid in font ... > and more of the same for a very long time. > > i get the same results if i specify the pk directories using the > qualifier /pk_file_dir=wherever. > > this is an annoyance. it's not an immediate problem, since i can continue > to use our "old" version of dvitoln03, but i really was hoping to be able > to dump the old font directories. has anyone got dvitoln03 working > 'out of the box' with DECUS TeX? i'd check the source code, but i > really don't want to have to FTP another 60 MB from wustl.... any help > would be appreciated, even comments that point out something obvious > that i've missed. We (Ball State U, Muncie, IN, USA) are still using the older DECUS TeX distribution, but every now and then there would seem to be problems, so I FTP'd the DVItoLN03 sources from the ymir TeX archives (ymir.clairmont.edu) directory [anonymous.tex.drivers.ukln03]. This has the original WEB sources, etc. It does NOT have an .EXE file, so you will need Pascal (and Tangle, of course) to compile it. I got it because it is supposed to support full 256 character fonts, which the old one did not. I recommend continuing to use the older version if you can. The new version that I got also has another annoying habit, even though it can work at least some of the time. When the old version could not find a font (or the specified size of that font) it announced that fact and loaded blanks instead. The result was a partial document in which you could at least see partial results. The new version simply announces that it cannot find what it wants and then crashes, leaving you with nothing. After a while J Random User will probably start to be able to figure out from the messages what part of his/her document requires that font, but this, like many other TeX features has a real learning curve associated with it. (Don't get me wrong. I like TeX/LaTeX, but user-friendly it is not.) Anyway, I consider this to be a step backward in that driver and we will probably continue to use the older version of DVItoLN03 around here until this new behavior gets fixed or the font formats are changed so much that we cannot use the old version anymore. ======== Paul Neubauer neubauer@bsu-cs.bsu.edu 00prneubauer@bsu-ucs.bsu.edu neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP 00prneubauer@bsu-ucs.UUCP 00PRNEUBAUER@BSUVAX1.BITNET