david@dogmelb.dog.oz.au (David Le Blanc) (01/04/91)
Thanks to everyone who responded about the request for the dvi viewer for sun's. Given the following : > > I recommend xtex, part of the SeeTeX package. > * Ken Hughes (hughes@sol.csee.usf.edu) | "I prayed for the death of Heather > > Xtex (available separately, or as part of a package called SeeTeX) is a nice X > * Peter > > Get SeeTeX-2.16.tar.Z > * mleisher@nmsu.edu Mark Leisher > > "xtex" is the one to get. > * /Lars > I guess I'll go for xtex! Also, dvips541 by Tom Rokicki is the best dvi2ps program I have *EVER* used! Just thought I'd say that.. Cheers -- Email: david@dogmelb.dog@munnari.oz | Division of Geomechanics, TEL. (03) 881 1355 | CSIRO, P.O. Box 54 FAX (03) 881 2052 | Mt Waverley 3149, | AUSTRALIA.
sie@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Simon Raybould) (01/05/91)
In article <139@dogmelb.dog.oz.au> david@dogmelb.dog.oz.au (David Le Blanc) writes: Thanks to everyone who responded about the request for the dvi viewer for sun's. Given the following : > > I recommend xtex, part of the SeeTeX package. > * Ken Hughes (hughes@sol.csee.usf.edu) | "I prayed for the death of Heather > > Xtex (available separately, or as part of a package called SeeTeX) is a nice X > * Peter > > Get SeeTeX-2.16.tar.Z > * mleisher@nmsu.edu Mark Leisher > > "xtex" is the one to get. > * /Lars > I guess I'll go for xtex! Where can I get a copy of Xtex ? does an anonomous ftp site have it ? which one ? Thanks -- Simon J Raybould (sie@fulcrum.bt.co.uk) // {o.o} \X/AMIGA \-/ =========================================================================== British Telecom Fulcrum, Fordrough Lane, Birmingham, B9 5LD, ENGLAND.
smith@zeus.harvard.edu (Steven Smith) (01/10/91)
I agree with Andreas Stolcke (Article 4886) that the inconvenience of X fonts makes xdvi more attractive than xtex. There is one point, however, on which I am uncertain. The previewer dvipage, which unfortunately runs only on SunView, produces the crispest display I have seen. It substitutes spatial resolution for grey scale resolution by passing the binary text image through a low pass filter, creating a highly readable display. I know that xdvi does not utilize such a filter and consequently its display is inferior to dvipage. Does xtex employ such a trick? Does anyone know if there is a DVI previewer that 1) runs on X/SUN 2) reads GF/PK files, 3) provides grey scale resolution and maybe 4) reads VF files (allowing one to preview a document set in PostScript fonts) I suggest that these three (four?) capabilities would best serve the plurality of TeX users, but am unsure if they exist in any one package. Steven Smith smith@sandalphon.harvard.edu
rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) (01/10/91)
>The previewer dvipage, which unfortunately runs only on SunView, >produces the crispest display I have seen. It substitutes spatial >resolution for grey scale resolution by passing the binary text image >through a low pass filter, creating a highly readable display. I know >that xdvi does not utilize such a filter and consequently its display >is inferior to dvipage. Does xtex employ such a trick? I've played with this idea on and off for the past five years. Unfortunately, at the low resolutions previewing is normally done at (72 to 150 dpi), the feature size of the characters is about the same size as the pixels being used to display them. Thus, using low-pass filtering tends to blur out the features, rather than reduce the ragged edges. In other words, low-pass filtering `blurs' the image, and my eyes at least get `frustrated' trying to focus on the characters. At resolutions of 300 dpi and above, low pass filtering does seem to make the display look better, but not many screens can show an entire page at 300 dpi. -tom
grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (01/10/91)
>>>>> 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)marcel@cs.caltech.edu (Marcel van der Goot) (01/10/91)
In <1991Jan9.182924.1523@Neon.Stanford.EDU> Tomas G. Rokicki (rokicki@Neon.Stanford.EDU) writes, in response to <SMITH.91Jan9111741@zeus.harvard.edu> by Steven Smith (smith@zeus.harvard.edu): > Unfortunately, at the low resolutions previewing is normally done at > (72 to 150 dpi), the feature size of the characters is about the same > size as the pixels being used to display them. Thus, using low-pass > filtering tends to blur out the features, rather than reduce the > ragged edges. > > In other words, low-pass filtering `blurs' the image, and my eyes at > least get `frustrated' trying to focus on the characters. > > At resolutions of 300 dpi and above, low pass filtering does seem to > make the display look better, but not many screens can show an entire > page at 300 dpi. I don't know what the resolution of a sun-3/60 is, but certainly not 300 dpi (that's the resolution of our laser printer). Nevertheless, I find that I can comfortably read a whole TeX page, set in 10 points (but 12 pt is easier), as it is displayed by dvipage. Using grey pixels for pixels that should be partially black seems to me to cause much less frustration (of the eyes as well as of me) than all the artifacts introduced by displaying the text directly. (Anti-aliasing is quite common in all computer graphics applications, so I think I'm not alone in this preference.) Also, if you want to see details (as opposed to judging the overall look of the page) you can display at a higher resolution (dvipage has 4) and look at just a partial page. I have seen xdvi on the same computer, and really, it doesn't even come close to dvipage. Marcel van der Gooot marcel@vlsi.cs.caltech.edu