This manual documents Dvips version 5.97 (July 2008), a program to translate a DVI file into PostScript. You may freely use, modify and/or distribute this file.
The Dvips program has a number of features that set it apart from other PostScript drivers for TeX. This rather long section describes the advantages of using Dvips, and may be skipped if you are just interested in learning how to use the program. See Installation, for details of compilation and installation.
The Dvips driver generates excellent, standard PostScript, that can be included in other documents as figures or printed through a variety of spoolers. The generated PostScript requires very little printer memory, so very complex documents with a lot of fonts can easily be printed even on PostScript printers without much memory, such as the original Apple LaserWriter. The PostScript output is also compact, requiring less disk space to store and making it feasible as a transfer format.
Even those documents that are too complex to print in their entirety on a particular printer can be printed, since Dvips will automatically split such documents into pieces, reclaiming the printer memory between each piece.
The Dvips program supports graphics in a natural way, allowing PostScript graphics to be included and automatically scaled and positioned in a variety of ways.
Printers with any resolution are supported, even if they have different resolutions in the horizontal and vertical directions. High resolution output is supported for typesetters, including an option that compresses the bitmap fonts so that typesetter virtual memory is not exhausted. This option also significantly reduces the size of the PostScript file and decoding in the printer is very fast.
Missing fonts can be automatically generated if Metafont exists on the system, or fonts can be converted from GF to PK format on demand. If a font cannot be generated, a scaled version of the same font at a different size can be used instead, although Dvips will complain loudly about the poor aesthetics of the resulting output.
Users will appreciate features such as collated copies and support for tpic, psfig, emtex, and METAPOST; system administrators will love the support for multiple printers, each with their own configuration file, and the ability to pipe the output directly to a program such as lpr. Support for MS-DOS, OS/2, and VMS in addition to Unix is provided in the standard distribution, and porting to other systems is easy.
One of the most important features is the support of virtual fonts, which add an entirely new level of flexibility to TeX. Virtual fonts are used to give Dvips its excellent PostScript font support, handling all the font remapping in a natural, portable, elegant, and extensible way. Dvips even comes with its own Afm2tfm program that creates the necessary virtual fonts and TeX font metric files automatically from the Adobe font metric files.
Source is provided and freely distributable, so adding a site-specific feature is possible. Adding such features is made easier by the highly modular structure of the program.
There is really no reason to use another driver, and the more people use Dvips, the less time will be spent fighting with PostScript and the more time will be available to create beautiful documents. So if you don't use Dvips on your system, get it today.
Tom Rokicki wrote and maintains the original Dvips program.
(A copy of this chapter is in the distribution file dvipsk/INSTALL.)
Installing Dvips is mostly the same as installing any Kpathsea-using program. Therefore, for the basic steps involved, see Installation. (A copy is in the file kpathsea/INSTALL.)
For solutions to common installation problems and information on how to report a bug, see the file kpathsea/BUGS (see Bugs). For solutions to Dvips-specific problems, see Debug options. Also see the Dvips home page at http://www.radicaleye.com/dvips.
Dvips does require some additional installation, detailed in the sections below. Also, to configure color devices, see Color device configuration.
Dvips has its own configuration files: a file config.ps for
sitewide defaults, and a file config.printer for each
printer (output device). Since these are site-specific, make
install does not create them; you must create them yourself.
(These Dvips configuration files are independent of the Kpathsea configuration file texmf.cnf (see Config files).
Dvips configuration files contents and searching are described fully in Config files. The simplest way to create a new configuration file is to copy and modify the file dvipsk/contrib/config.proto, seasoning with options to your taste from Config files. Here is config.proto for your reading pleasure:
% Prototype Dvips configuration file.
% How to print, maybe with lp instead lpr, etc.
o |lpr
% Default resolution of this device, in dots per inch.
D 600
% Metafont mode. (This is completely different from the -M command-line
% option, which controls whether MakeTeXPK is invoked.) Get
% ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/modes.mf for a list of mode names. This mode
% and the D number above must agree, or MakeTeXPK will get confused.
M ljfour
% Memory available. Download the three-line PostScript file:
% %! Hey, we're PostScript
% /Times-Roman findfont 30 scalefont setfont 144 432 moveto
% vmstatus exch sub 40 string cvs show pop showpage
% to determine this number. (It will be the only thing printed.)
m 3500000
% Correct printer offset. You can use testpage.tex from the LaTeX
% distribution to find these numbers. Print testpage.dvi more than once.
O 0pt,0pt
% Partially download Type 1 fonts by default. Only reason not to do
% this is if you encounter bugs. (Please report them to
% tex-k@mail.tug.org if you do.)
j
% Also look for fonts at these resolutions.
R 300 600
% With a high resolution and a RISC cpu, better to compress the bitmaps.
Z
% Uncomment these if you have and want to use PostScript versions of the
% fonts.
%p +cmfonts.map
%p +lafonts.map
%p +cyrfonts.map
%p +eufonts.map
% You will also want definitions for alternative paper sizes -- A4,
% legal, and such. Examples in contrib/papersize.level2 and
% contrib/papersize.simple.
To use PostScript fonts with TeX and Dvips, you need both metric files (.tfm and .vf) and the outlines (.pfa or .pfb). See Font concepts.
To support the basic PostScript font set, the recommended (and simplest) approach is to install the files at http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/psfonts/lw35nfsx.zip. This archive contains metrics, outlines, and bitmaps (for previewing) for the 35 de facto standard fonts donated by URW and the additional high-quality freely available PostScript fonts donated by Adobe, Bitstream, and URW, including geometrically-created variants such as oblique and small caps.
CTAN:/fonts/psfonts contains support for many additional fonts for which you must buy outlines (Adobe, Bigelow & Holmes, Monotype, Softkey, Y&Y). (For CTAN info, see unixtex.ftp; a copy is in the top-level file INSTALL.)
If you have additional PostScript fonts, you can make them available to Dvips by (1) giving them with appropriate filenames; and (2) running Afm2tfm (see Making a font available) to make TFM and VF metrics for TeX and Dvips to use. Also add them to psfonts.map if necessary (see psfonts.map); it contains everything contained in lw35nfsx.zip and most fonts that come with Unix systems.
Following are locations for vendor-supplied fonts. Please mail tex-k@tug.org if you find fonts elsewhere on your system.
The NeXT system supplies more fonts than any others, but there's a lot of overlap.
Finally, if you have an Hewlett-Packard printer, you should be able to get Type 1 font files for the standard 35 fonts from HP, if the freely available URW Type 1's do not satisfy for whatever reason. The phone number for HP Printer Drivers is (in the United States) 303-339-7009. The driver set to ask for is Adobe Type Manager 2.51, and the disk set number is ‘MP210en3’. Mentioning anything other than Microsoft Windows when you ask for the driver set will likely lead to great confusion on the other end.
Ghostscript is a PostScript interpreter freely available to end-users, written by Peter Deutsch. It can read the PostScript produced by Dvips and render it on your monitor, or for another device (e.g., an Epson printer) that does not support PostScript, or in PDF format. The latest version is available via http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html and ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/pub/ghost/aladdin/.
A somewhat older version of Ghostscript is available under the GNU General Public License, free to everyone. You can get that from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/.
The program Ghostview, written by Tim Theisen, provides typical previewing capabilities (next page/previous page, magnification, etc.). It requires Ghostscript to run, and files in structured Postscript, specifically with ‘%%Page’ comments (no ‘N’ in config.ps). You can get Ghostview from the same places as Ghostscript.
You've gone through all the trouble of installing Dvips, carefully read all the instructions in this manual, and still can't get something to work. The following sections provide some helpful hints if you find yourself in such a situation.
For details on effective bug reporting, common installation problems,
and mktexpk problems, see Bugs.
A good first debugging operation is to set the environment variable DVIPSDEBUG, which will display any configuration and map files read by Dvips. This way you can be sure it's finding the files and settings you expect.
The ‘-d’ flag to Dvips helps in tracking down certain errors. The
parameter to this flag is an integer that tells what errors are
currently being tracked. To track a certain class of debug messages,
simply provide the appropriate number given below; if you wish to track
multiple classes, sum the numbers of the classes you wish to track. To
track all classes, you can use -1. Another useful value is
3650, which tracks everything having to do with file searching
and opening.
You can also set the environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to any of these values.
Some of these debugging options are actually provided by Kpathsea (see Debugging).
The classes are:
stat calls
If you are not getting any output at all, even from the simplest one-character file (for instance, ‘\ \bye’), then something is very wrong. Practically any file sent to a PostScript laser printer should generate some output, at the very least a page detailing what error occurred, if any. Talk to your system administrator about downloading a PostScript error handler. (Adobe distributes a good one called ‘ehandler.ps’.) It is possible, especially if you are using non-Adobe PostScript, that your PostScript interpreter is broken. Even then it should generate an error message. Dvips tries to work around as many bugs as possible in common non-Adobe PostScript interpreters, but doubtless it misses a few. PowerPage Revision 1, Interpreter Version 20001.001, on a Mitsubishi Shinko CHC-S446i color thermal dye sublimation printer is known to be unable to print with any but builtin fonts.
If Dvips gives any strange error messages, or compilation on your machine generated a lot of warnings, perhaps the Dvips program itself is broken. Try using the debug options to determine where the error occurred (see Debug options).
It is possible your spooler is broken and is misinterpreting the structured comments. Try the ‘-N’ flag to turn off structured comments and see what happens.
If some documents come out inverted or too small, probably your spooler is not supplying an end of job indicator at the end of each file. (This commonly happens on small machines that don't have spoolers.) You can force Dvips to do this with the ‘-F’ flag (or ‘F’ config file option), but this generates files with a terminating binary character (control-D). You can also try using the ‘-s’ flag (or ‘s’ config file option) to enclose the entire job in a save/restore pair. See Command-line options, and Config files.
If your printer returns error messages, the error message gives very good information on what might be going wrong. One of the most common error messages is ‘bop undefined’. This is caused by old versions of Transcript and other spoolers that do not properly parse the setup section of the PostScript. To fix this, turn off structured comments with the ‘-N’ option, but it'd be best to get your spooling software updated.
Another error message is ‘VM exhausted’. Some printers indicate this error by locking up, others quietly reset. This is caused by Dvips thinking that the printer has more memory than it actually does, and then printing a complicated document. To fix this, try lowering the ‘m’ parameter in the configuration file; use the debug option to make sure you adjust the correct file.
Other errors may indicate you are trying to include graphics that don't nest properly in other PostScript documents, among other things. Try the PostScript file on a QMS PS-810 or other Adobe PostScript printer if you have one, or Ghostscript (see Ghostscript installation); it might be a problem with the printer itself.
This is usually caused by incorrectly specifying the amount of memory the printer has in the configuration file; see the previous section.
The most common problem with including graphics is an incorrect bounding box (see Bounding box). Complain to whoever wrote the software that generated the file if the bounding box is indeed incorrect.
Another possible problem is that the figure you are trying to include does not nest properly; there are certain rules PostScript applications must follow when generating files to be included. The Dvips program includes work-arounds for such errors in Adobe Illustrator and other programs, but there are certainly applications that haven't been tested.
One possible thing to try is the ‘-K’ flag which strips the comments from an included figure. This might be necessary if the PostScript spooling software does not read the structured comments correctly. Use of this flag will break graphics from some applications, though, since some applications read the PostScript file from the input stream, looking for a particular comment.
Any application which generates graphics output containing raw binary (not ASCII hex) will probably fail with Dvips.
Dvips reads a DVI file as output by (for example) TeX, and converts it to PostScript, taking care of builtin or downloaded PostScript fonts, font reencoding, color, etc. These features are described in other chapters in this document.
There many ways to control Dvips' behavior: configuration files, environment variables, and command-line options.
To use Dvips at its simplest, simply type
dvips foo
where foo.dvi is the output of TeX that you want to print. If Dvips has been installed correctly, the document will probably roll out of your default printer.
If you use fonts that have not been used on your system before, they may be automatically generated; this process can take a few minutes, so progress reports appear by default. The next time that document is printed, these fonts will have been saved in the proper directories, so printing will go much faster. (If Dvips tries to endlessly generate the same fonts over and over again, it hasn't been installed properly. See Unable to generate fonts.)
Many options are available (see the next section). For a brief summary of available options, just type
dvips --help
Dvips has a plethora of command line options. Reading through this section will give a good idea of the capabilities of the driver.
Here is a handy summary of the options; it is printed out when you run Dvips with no arguments or with the standard ‘--help’ option.
Usage: dvips [OPTION]... FILENAME[.dvi]
Convert DVI input files to PostScript.
See http://tug.org/dvips/ for the full manual and other information.
Options:
-a* Conserve memory, not time -A Print only odd (TeX) pages
-b # Page copies, for posters e.g. -B Print only even (TeX) pages
-c # Uncollated copies -C # Collated copies
-d # Debugging -D # Resolution
-e # Maxdrift value -E* Try to create EPSF
-f* Run as filter -F* Send control-D at end
-G* Shift low chars to higher pos.
-h f Add header file
-i* Separate file per section
-j* Download fonts partially
-k* Print crop marks -K* Pull comments from inclusions
-l # Last page
-m* Manual feed -M* Don't make fonts
-mode s Metafont device name
-n # Maximum number of pages -N* No structured comments
-noomega Disable Omega extensions
-o f Output file -O c Set/change paper offset
-p # First page -P s Load config.$s
-pp l Print only pages listed
-q* Run quietly
-r* Reverse order of pages -R* Run securely
-s* Enclose output in save/restore -S # Max section size in pages
-t s Paper format -T c Specify desired page size
-u s PS mapfile -U* Disable string param trick
-v Print version number and quit -V* Send downloadable PS fonts as PK
-x # Override dvi magnification -X # Horizontal resolution
-y # Multiply by dvi magnification -Y # Vertical resolution
-z* Hyper PS -Z* Compress bitmap fonts
# = number f = file s = string * = suffix, `0' to turn off
c = comma-separated dimension pair (e.g., 3.2in,-32.1cm)
l = comma-separated list of page ranges (e.g., 1-4,7-9)
Email bug reports to tex-k@mail.tug.org.
Many of the parameterless options listed here can be turned off by suffixing the option with a zero (‘0’); for instance, to turn off page reversal, use ‘-r0’. Such options are marked with a trailing ‘*’.
PRINTER environment variable; use ‘-P$PRINTER’ after the
‘-f’ to read it anyway. It also turns off the automatic sending of
control-D if it was turned on with the ‘-F’ option or in the
configuration file; use ‘-F’ after the ‘-f’ to send it anyway.
mktexpk, the invocation is appended to a file
missfont.log (by default) in the current directory. You can then
execute the log file to create the missing files after fixing the
problem.
If the current directory is not writable and the environment variable or
configuration file value ‘TEXMFOUTPUT’ is set, its value is used.
Otherwise, nothing is written. The name ‘missfont.log’ is
overridden by the ‘MISSFONT_LOG’ environment variable or
configuration file value.
If name is ‘-’, output goes to standard output. If the first
character of name is ‘!’ or ‘|’, then the remainder will
be used as an argument to popen; thus, specifying ‘|lpr’ as
the output file will automatically queue the file for printing as
usual. (The MS-DOS version will print to the local printer device
PRN when name is ‘|lpr’ and a program by that name
cannot be found.)
‘-o’ disables the automatic reading of the PRINTER
environment variable, and turns off the automatic sending of control-D.
See the ‘-f’ option for how to override this.
This is useful for a printer that consistently offsets output pages by a
certain amount. You can use the file testpage.tex to determine
the correct value for your printer. Be sure to do several runs with the
same O value—some printers vary widely from run to run.
If your printer offsets every other page consistently, instead of every
page, your best recourse is to use ‘bop-hook’ (see PostScript hooks).
A configuration file for creating Adobe PDF files is provided in ‘config.pdf’ and can be loaded with ‘-Ppdf’, it will try to include Type1 outline fonts into the PostScript file (see Hypertext caveats).
If no ‘-P’ or ‘-o’ is given, the environment variable
PRINTER is checked. If that variable exists, and a corresponding
config.printer (printer.cfg on MS-DOS) file
exists, it is read.
See Configuration file searching.
\special (via ‘`’, see Dynamic creation of graphics)
and config files (via the ‘E’ option, see Configuration file commands) and opening of any absolute or ..-relative
filenames. ‘-R1’, the default, forbids shell escapes but allows
absolute filenames. ‘-R0’ allows both.
mtpk or gsftopk or pstopk or some combination
thereof to generate the required bitmap fonts; these programs are
supplied with Dvips. The bitmap must be put into psfonts.map as
the downloadable file for that font. This is useful only for those
fonts for which you do not have real outlines, being downloaded to
printers that have no resident fonts, i.e., very rarely.
Dvips looks for many environment variables, to define search paths and
other things. The path variables are read as needed, after all
configuration files are read, so they override values in the
configuration files. (Except for TEXCONFIG, which defines where
the configuration files themselves are found.)
See Path specifications, for details of interpretation of path and other environment variables common to all Kpathsea-using programs. Only the environment variables specific to Dvips are mentioned here.
DVIPSDEBUGDVIPSFONTSDVIPSHEADERSDVIPSMAKEPKmktexpk program with the MAKETEXPK environment
variable; see MakeTeX script arguments.
DVIPSRCDVIPSSIZESPRINTERPRINTER to determine the output destination in any way.)
TEXCONFIGTEXPICTSTEXINPUTS is looked for. See Supported file formats.
This section describes in detail the Dvips-specific config.* device configuration files (called *.cfg on MS-DOS), which override the texmf.cnf configuration files generic to Kpathsea which Dvips also reads (see Config files).
For information about installing these files, including a prototype file you can copy, see config.ps installation.
The Dvips program loads many different configuration files, so that parameters can be set globally across the system, on a per-device basis, or individually by each user.
DVIPSRC, if defined, is used as the specification of the startup
file. If this variable is undefined, Dvips uses a platform-specific
default name. On Unix Dvips looks for the default startup file under
the name $HOME/.dvipsrc, which is in the user's home directory.
On MS-DOS and MS-Windows, where users generally don't have their private
directories, the startup file is called dvips.ini and it is
searched for along the path for Dvips configuration files (as described
in Supported file formats.); users are
expected to set this path as they see fit for their taste.
PRINTER. If it exists, then
config.$PRINTER ($PRINTER.cfg on MS-DOS) is
loaded (if it exists).
Because the .dvipsrc file is read before the printer-specific
configuration files, individual users cannot override settings in the
latter. On the other hand, the TEXCONFIG path usually includes
the current directory, and can in any case be set to anything, so the
users can always define their own printer-specific configuration files
to be found before the system's.
A few command-line options are treated specially, in that they are not overridden by configuration files:
The purpose of these special cases is to (1) minimize the chance of having a mismatched mode and resolution (which ‘mktexpk’ cannot resolve), and (2) let command-line options override config files where possible.
Most of the configuration file commands are similar to corresponding command line options, but there are a few exceptions. When they are the same, we omit the description here.
As with command line options, many may be turned off by suffixing the letter with a zero (‘0’).
Within a configuration file, empty lines, and lines starting with a space, asterisk, equal sign, percent sign, or pound sign are ignored. There is no provision for continuation lines.
system(3); can be used to get
the current date into a header file for inclusion, for instance.
Possibly dangerous; this may be disabled, in which case a warning will
be printed if the option is used (and warnings are not suppressed).
DVIPSHEADERS overrides this.
%! Hey, we're PostScript
/Times-Roman findfont 30 scalefont setfont 144 432 moveto
vmstatus exch sub 40 string cvs show pop showpage
The number printed by this file is the total memory free; it is usually
best to tell Dvips that the printer has slightly less memory, because
many programs download permanent macros that can reduce the memory in
the printer. Some systems or printers can dynamically increase the
memory available to a PostScript interpreter, in which case this file
might return a ridiculously low number; for example, the NeXT computer
and Ghostscript. In these cases, a value of one million works fine.
o |lpr -Pfoo
The MS-DOS version will emulate spooling to lpr by printing to
the local printer device PRN if it doesn't find an executable
program by that name in the current directory or along the PATH.
PKFONTS, TEXPKS, GLYPHFONTS, and TEXFONTS
environment variables override this. See Supported file formats.
The given numbers must be sorted in increasing order; any number smaller than the preceding one is ignored. This is because it is better to scale a font up than down; scaling down can obliterate small features in the character shape.
The environment and config file values ‘DVIPSSIZES’ or ‘TEXSIZES’ override this configuration file setting.
If no ‘R’ settings or environment variables are specified, a list
compiled in during installation is used. This default list is defined by
the Makefile variable ‘default_texsizes’, defined in the file
make/paths.make.
TEXPICTS and then
TEXINPUTS environment variables override this.
TFMFONTS and then
TEXFONTS environment variables overrides this. This path is used
for resident fonts and fonts that can't otherwise be found.
Most TeX documents at a particular site are designed to use the local standard paper size (letter size in the United States, A4 in Europe). The Dvips program can be customized either sitewide or for a particular printer.
But many documents are designed for other paper sizes. For instance, you may want to design a document that has the long edge of the paper horizontal. This can be useful when typesetting booklets, brochures, complex tables, or many other documents. This type of paper orientation is called landscape orientation (the default orientation is portrait). Alternatively, a document might be designed for ledger or A3 paper.
Since the intended paper size in these cases is a document design decision, not a printing decision, such information should be given in the TeX file and not on the Dvips command line. For this reason, Dvips supports a ‘papersize’ special. It is hoped that this special will become standard over time for TeX previewers and other printer drivers.
Some LaTeX packages, e.g., ‘hyperref.sty’, write a ‘papersize’ special into the DVI file. In this case, you need not and should not attempt to override it manually.
The format of the ‘papersize’ special is
\special{papersize=width,height}
width is the horizontal size of the page, and height is the vertical size. The dimensions supported are the same as for TeX; namely, in (inches), cm (centimeters), mm (millimeters), pt (points), sp (scaled points), bp (big points, the same as the default PostScript unit), pc (picas), dd (didot points), and cc (ciceros).
For a US letter size landscape document, the papersize would be:
\special{papersize=11in,8.5in}
An alternate specification of landscape:
\special{landscape}
This is supported for backward compatibility, but it is hoped that
reventually the papersize comment will dominate.
Of course, such a \special only informs Dvips of the desired
paper size; you must also adjust \hsize and \vsize in your
TeX document typeset to those dimensions.
When using the papersize special, you generally should not also
specify -t on the command line (see Option details). The
exception is when using a nonstandard paper size that isn't
predefined; in this case, use -t unknown.
The papersize special must occur somewhere on the first page of
the document. Some packages, notably ‘hyperref’, insert this special.
The ‘@’ command in a configuration file sets the paper size defaults and options. The first ‘@’ command defines the default paper size. It has three possible parameters:
@ [name [hsize vsize]]
If ‘@’ is specified on a line by itself, with no parameters, it instructs Dvips to discard all previous paper size information (possibly from another configuration file).
If three parameters are given, with the first parameter being a name and the second and third being a dimension (as in ‘8.5in’ or ‘3.2cc’, just like in the ‘papersize’ special), then the option is interpreted as starting a new paper size description, where name is the name and hsize and vsize define the horizontal and vertical size of the sheet of paper, respectively. For example:
@ letterSize 8.5in 11in
If both hsize and vsize are zero (you must still specify units!) then any page size will match. If the ‘@’ character is immediately followed by a ‘+’ sign, then the remainder of the line (after skipping any leading blanks) is treated as PostScript code to send to the printer, presumably to select that particular paper size:
@ letter 8.5in 11in
@+ %%BeginPaperSize: Letter
@+ letter
@+ %%EndPaperSize
After all that, if the first character of the line is an exclamation point, then the line is put in the initial comments section of the final output file; else, it is put in the setup section of the output file. For example:
@ legal 8.5in 14in
@+ ! %%DocumentPaperSizes: Legal
@+ %%BeginPaperSize: Legal
@+ legal
@+ %%EndPaperSize
When Dvips has a paper format name given on the command line, it looks for a match by the name; when it has a ‘papersize’ special, it looks for a match by dimensions. The best match found (from the paper size information in the configuration file) is used. If nothing matches, a warning is printed and the first paper size is used. The dimensions must match within 5bp. Landscape mode for all paper sizes is automatically supported.
If your printer has a command to set a special paper size, then give dimensions of ‘0in 0in’; the PostScript code that sets the paper size can refer to the dimensions the user requested as ‘hsize’ and ‘vsize’; these will be macros defined in the PostScript that return the requested size in default PostScript units. Virtually all of the PostScript commands you use here are device-dependent and degrade the portability of the file; that is why the default first paper size entry should not send any PostScript commands down (although a structured comment or two would be okay). Also, some printers want ‘BeginPaperSize’ comments and paper size setting commands; others (such as the NeXT) want ‘PaperSize’ comments and they will handle setting the paper size. There is no solution I could find that works for both (except maybe specifying both).
When using a paper size that is not already defined in
config.ps, you probably want to say ‘-t unknown’ on
the command line; the unknown paper size definition in
config.ps has the requisite PostScript incantation to set the
PostScript page size, as just described.
The Perl 5 script contrib/configs/mkdvipspapers in the distribution directory may help in determining appropriate paper size definitions.
Notwithstanding the above, the default letter and a4
paper size definitions in config.ps execute the
setpagedevice operator if it exists (it was defined in
PostScript Level 2), or the ‘letter’ or ‘a4’ operator if
they exist (they are nonstandard and thus perhaps cause failures on
certain (unknown) printers). Not executing any page size definition
at all confuses PostScript conversion programs such as
ps2pdf, so we want to execute one if we can.
The letterSize and A4Size paper size definitions are now
synonyms for letter and a4.
Some printers, such as the Hewlett-Packard HP4si, have multiple paper
trays. You can set up Dvips to take advantage of this using the
bop-hook PostScript variable (see PostScript hooks).
For example, suppose you have an alternate tray stocked with letterhead
paper; the usual tray has the usual paper. You have a document where
you want the first page printed on letterhead, and the remaining pages
on the usual paper. You can create a header file, say
firstletterhead.PS, with the following (PostScript) code
(bop-hook is passed the current physical page number, which
starts at zero):
/bop-hook { dup 0 eq { alternatetray } { normaltray } ifelse } def
where alternatetray and normaltray are the appropriate commands to select the paper trays. On the 4SI, alternatetray is ‘statusdict begin 1 setpapertray end’ and normaltray is ‘statusdict begin 0 setpapertray end’.
Then, include the file with either
Dvips supports inclusion of PostScript figure files (e.g., Encapsulated PostScript), downloading other header files (e.g., fonts), including literal PostScript code, and hypertext.
Scaling and including PostScript graphics is a breeze—if the PostScript file is correctly formed. Even if it is not, however, the file can usually be accommodated with just a little more work.
The most important feature of a good PostScript file from the standpoint of including it in another document is an accurate bounding box comment. Every well-formed PostScript file has a comment describing where on the page the graphic is located, and how big that graphic is.
This information is given as the lower left and upper right corners of the box just enclosing the graphic, and is thus referred to as the bounding box. These coordinates are given in the default PostScript units (there are precisely 72 PostScript units to the inch, like TeX big points) with respect to the lower left corner of the sheet of paper.
To see if a PostScript file has a bounding box comment, just look at the first few lines of the file. PostScript files are standard ASCII, so you can use any text editor to do this. If within the first few dozen lines there is a line like
%%BoundingBox: 25 50 400 300
(with any reasonable numbers), chances are very good that the file is Encapsulated PostScript and will work easily with Dvips. If the file contains instead a line like
%%BoundingBox: (atend)
the file is still probably Encapsulated PostScript, but the bounding box is given at the end of the file. Dvips needs it at the beginning. You can move it with that same text editor, or a simple script. (The bounding box is given in this way when the program that generated the PostScript couldn't know the size in advance, or was too lazy to compute it.)
If the document lacks a ‘%%BoundingBox:’ altogether, you can determine one in a couple of ways. One is to use the ‘bbfig’ program distributed with Dvips in the contrib directory. This can usually find the correct bounding box automatically; it works best with Ghostscript.
If the comment looks like this:
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 792
the graphic claims to take up an entire sheet of paper. This is usually a symptom of a bug in the program that generated it.
The other is to do it yourself: print the file. Now, take a ruler, and make the following measurements (in PostScript units, so measure in inches and multiply by 72): From the left edge of the paper to the leftmost mark on the paper is llx, the first number. From the bottom edge of the paper to the bottommost mark on the paper is lly, the second number. From the left edge of the paper to the rightmost mark on the paper is urx, the third number. The fourth and final number, ury, is the distance from the bottom of the page to the uppermost mark on the paper.
Once you have the numbers, add a comment of the following form as the second line of the document. (The first line should already be a line starting with the two characters ‘%!’; if it is not, the file probably isn't PostScript.)
%%BoundingBox: llx lly urx ury
Or, if you don't want to modify the file, you can simply write these numbers down in a convenient place and give them in your TeX document when you import the graphic, as described in the next section.
If the document does not have such a bounding box, or if the bounding box is given at the end of the document, or the bounding box is wrong, please complain to the authors of the software package that generated the file.
Once the figure file has a bounding box comment (see the previous section) you are ready to import the graphic into a LaTeX document. For LaTeX 2e, you can use the epsf, graphics or graphicx packages, but the last is recommended—it has the most flexible syntax, and is briefly described here. Further information can be found in grfguide or epslatex, which should be included in your LaTeX distribution in DVI, PDF, or other formats. (If you are still using LaTeX 2.09, use epsf.sty).
Just put the following command into your preamble:
\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
Depending on your system, a suitable driver setup may already be present, so that LaTeX automatically produces DVI files suitable for Dvips. In this case you can leave out the ‘[dvips]’ parameter.
Now, at the point you want to include a file foo.eps, enter a line such as:
\includegraphics{foo.eps}
However, it is usually best to omit the file extension and only use
\includegraphics{foo}
because then you can process the same LaTeX file with different TeX engines or DVI converters if you also provide suitable graphics files for them, e.g., foo.pdf or foo.png.
The \includegraphics command has many options, specified in ‘key=value’ syntax, to allow you to resize, rotate or trim the included graphic—see grfguide or epslatex. If your file does not have a bounding box comment, you can supply the numbers as determined in the previous section, in the same order they would have been in a normal bounding box comment:
\includegraphics[bb=100 100 500 500]{foo.ps}
Now, save your changes and run LaTeX and Dvips; the output should have your graphic positioned at precisely the point you indicated, occupying the proper amount of space.
PostScript graphics have their origin in the lower left corner. Therefore, in TeX, a graphic will occupy a box that extends far above the line where it is put in, but has depth zero below it. Combining ‘\includegraphics’ with ‘\parbox’ commands or minipages can sometimes be confusing when this is not taken into account.
If you are using LaTeX 2e, use the ‘graphics’ or ‘graphicx’ package. See \includegraphics.
If you are using plain TeX or LaTeX 2.09, you need epsf.tex (for plain TeX) and epsf.sty (for LaTeX). For plain TeX, add a line like this near the top of your input file:
\input epsf
If you are using LaTeX 2.09, add the ‘epsf’ style option, as in:
\documentstyle[12pt,epsf]{article}
In any case, the above only needs to be done once, no m