[OS X TeX] problem using gs 6.52 with teTeX

[Gerben Wierda]

On Wednesday, March 6, 2002, at 11:09 , Olivier Larroche wrote:

>  - running xdvi (that I also compiled from source) on the same dvi 
> files gives a
> satisfactory display, which, as far as I understand, tends to mean that 
> the
> problem lies in dvips (that's the version that came with texshop, I only
> replaced gs-related stuff).

That is a curious conclusion to draw. You replace gs with another 
version and conclude dvips is at fault. I would say that the combination 
of dvips+gs6.52 gives different results than dvips+gs6.02 and that it is 
most likely that something is wrong with your gs setup. On the other 
hand, differences between gs6.52 and gs6.02 are not that big.

Having said that, I think it is good to test
	dvips -Ppdf
or
	altpdftex --dviopts="-Ppdf"

If that helps, the 'problem' (in fact it is a setting) was there in the 
first place and you probably just didn't notice it.

Since I do not use X11, I cannot help you on this one and test it out. 
But I do know that there are newer versions of gs available, e.g. 7.02. 
Before you go on trying to find out what is going on, you'd better 
upgrade first if -Ppdf does not help.

Note: TeX produces device independent output (dvi) it is one of it's 
strength. pdfTeX bypasses that by producing device-oriented output 
directly. By using PDF as the output device a lot of device-independence 
(read: vector formats for fonts) returns but it partly destroys TeX's 
purpose because that output is somewhat inferior since the best results 
for a particular device always remains using a dvi-to-dvice program with 
only bitmapped fonts (the PDF is good enough for screen and ordinary 
print, though).

A good solution would be to have two processes for creating output (just 
like TeXview.app on the NeXT had): a "dvips+gs" using printer resolution 
for print output and a "dvips -Ppdf + gs" (or the appropriate altpdftex 
commands) for printer output.

A frontend could handle that by rerunning altpdftex (I don't think it is 
possible to influence pdfTeX that way at this moment) with a different 
setting when printing to a different pdf file and printing that file.

G


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