Okay, so if we agree the solution is: 1. Allow the output pipe to be opened in all cases
and 2. Never search for configuration files (config.ps, config.printer, and .dvipsrc are the only ones critical here) in the current directory then I've got some questions about dvips vs kpathsea. Who currently is responsible for defining the default paths for dvips? Is this still in dvips, or is this in texconfig, or kpathsea? Is it simply a matter of changing those defaults, wherever they live? -tom