Norbert Preining <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I guess I am missing something, but isn't all this a simple question of > RTFM? ...
I don't think so. To start with your finish: > Finally, you can adjust the default settings for geometry.sty > by putting a copy of > /usr/share/texmf-{tetex,texlive}/tex/latex/geometry/geometry.cfg > into > /etc/texmf/tex/latex/geometry/ > and editing this file as described in the file. I think we can as well do this as distributors (either in Debian, or TeX Live). > First: dvi format *does*not*support* the paper size, you have to specify > the paper size to the driver: > dvips -t a5 > dvipdfm -p a5 ... or using \special commands, as you describe below. > So this explains why Kohda-san did arrive at the table where the dvips option > gives the best results: It works (as specified above) for dvips, xdvi. > For pdflatex the option pdftex is automatically selected. And I assume that > dvipdfm(x) also just check the same special as dvips, so that's the reason > why dvipdfmx with dvips-option worked. Exactly. And this raises the question whether there is any reason not to write out dvips specials into the DVI file by default, doesn't it? > OTOH, if you add the geometry package it selects automatically the pdftex > driver and the a5paper option from the documentclass is executed, so: > \documentclass[a5paper]{article} > \usepackage{geometry} > and pdfinfo gave me A5 paper as intended. As it should be. Yes, but why can we get this magic with PDF, but not with DVI? > Variant b) Use geometry.sty and the correct driver option > For this you specify the paper size as usual in the documentclass > options: > \documentclass[a5paper]{article} > and furthermore use geometry.sty with the correct driver option: > \usepackage[driver=dvips]{geometry} And I would actually *not* like to encourage people to hardcode this driver selection in their files. Too likely they also do it for graphicx.sty. graphicx.sty is not error-tolerant AFAIK, and documents will be wrong or fail if you try pdflatex on such a document; moreover it's not needed with graphicx, and in principle also not with geometry. > Finally, for pdflatex, use the option driver=pdftex That's a superfluous option, IMO it should be deleted from geometry, since it does not make a difference whether it is specified or not. > To some it up, using geometry it is currently possible to use > \usepackage[driver=dvips]{geometry} > and have the correct paper sizes with all the common drivers. Which means we might as well use \ExecuteOptions{dvips} in geometry.cfg and have working documents without any change to the source. Regards, Frank -- Dr. Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)