On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Martin Buchholz wrote:
> >>>>> "T" == Thomas Esser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> >> (martin@polgar) ~/i/resume $ xdvi tel.dvi
> >> kpathsea: Running mktexpk --mfmode ljfour --bdpi 600 --mag 1+0/600 --dpi 600 pzdr
> >> mktexpk: Running gsftopk pzdr 600
> >> gsftopk(k) version 1.17
> >> gs: No such file or directory
>
> T> You can set up mktexpk to use ps2pk instead of gsftopk (just look at
> T> texmf/web2c/mktex.cnf). That way, you do not need gs. Or, install gs.
>
> Indeed, when used on a system with gs installed, xdvi does work. This
> is reasonable. gsftopk might give a more explanatory error message
> (as a naive user I don't understand why xdvi might need to invoke
> ghostscript).
>
> >> Amazingly, this actually succeeded in printing a real telephone glyph!
>
> T> :-)
>
> >> But it shouldn't be this hard.
Unfortunately, your experience is all too common. For many people,
getting teTeX to work seems to be very painful. As a result, they
become reluctant to make changes to their system. This means they
don't install improved versions, bug fixes, etc. (or they give up
on unix and buy Windows NT with Y&Y TeX!).
> T> Well, for me, it just works. One problem is that you are using a
> T> PostScript font without the "default" program that people use to handle
> T> PostScript (gs + gv). The other way (ps2pk + xdvi) was not known to
> T> you... :-(
>
> T> Of course, ps2pk *is* mentioned in TETEXDOC.
The .pk fonts are a major headache. Ghostscript is rather fragile,
in part because users are forever tweaking environment variables to
change font paths, etc. (e.g., to switch between URW and Adobe versions
of the lw35 fonts, add Japanese, ...). If you let users generate them
you have problems of world writable directories, etc. Now that
xdvi has a type1 rasterizer and we have some decent free fonts that
support LY1 encodings, it may be possible for many people to live
happily without ever using .pk fonts.
If you are using Type 1 fonts, pdf may be less problematic.
I ran pdflatex on the sample file. Xpdf on SGI Irix gave:
Error: Failed to open font:
'-*-zapfdingbats-medium-r-normal-*-11-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
Acrobat reader does work, as did gs.
> But TETEXDOC is not mentioned on the teTeX Home Page. I'll go read it
> now.
>
> Like many TeX users, I have one TeX document (my resume) which I
> update every year or two. So I don't want to spend hours learning.
> I already have my own buggy free software to maintain.
If you are going to use TeX at all, you may find it better in the long
run to use it for everything so that you keep your skills current
and can rely on it in a crunch. Otherwise you may end up like the
sad people who wander the halls looking for a way to load their old
WordStar files that won't import into their copy of MS Office.
The TeX files I created using WordStar on a CPM system will still
work with today's teTeX, but many documents I created with the proprietary
word processor du jour are lost forever.
> teTeX was really easy to install - thank you - You've put together a
> great distribution. I especially like the way that the distribution
> can be installed in any directory.
>
> Perhaps ghostscript and ghostview should be included in the
> distribution. My memories of the last time I built these programs
> years ago were not altogether pleasant.
This has been discussed before. A central problem is that the current
version is not GPL'd, and many teTeX users do need (in fact, help to
create) the new features. On some systems (SGI) DPS is provided, so
not everyone needs gs.
--
George White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Halifax, Nova Scotia
