[texhax] will to buy the lastest version of TeXLive, but without two technical problems -- xdvi, PostScript

[Uwe Lueck]

Upshot:

I wrote at 2015-03-03 12:39:
> With my xdvi, they are
> 
>     Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*" to type FontStruct
>     Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*" to type FontStruct
> 
[RK] > has nothing to do with the content of the DVI file. It's an X11
[RK] > related warning. I suppose that Helvetica is used for the title bar
[RK] > and/or menus.
[RK] >
[RK] > A more serious warning is
[RK] > xdvi-xaw: Warning: Raw Postscript commands on page 2 may be ren....
> 
> Here, it is
>
>     xdvi.bin: Warning: Raw Postscript commands on page 2 may be rendered incorrectly.

So the problem seem to be certain PostScript commands
 
[RK] > Xdvi yields the same output as in the screen shots.  However, the
[RK] > output of dvips is correct.  Thus I think that the DVI file is ok.

I don't ...

> However, Evince shows garbage text on south-west like xdvi
> (screenshots), no diagram at all.

So two DVI viewers for Unices have the same problem with placement of text
(with respect to a diagram). Already this indicates that xdvi is not the problem.

It would be nice if somebody with Okular installed could try it on the .dvi 
obtainable from Reinhard's

    http://ms25.x64.me/partiel_algorigramme_UTF8.tar.xz

Okular is another DVI viewer -- is there another one for Unices?

Actually, to complete the picture, the DVI could also be viewed under Windows
(YAP!) ...

As to whether the DVI is OK: if the .ps looks fine but DVI viewers 
cannot display it properly, I would say that the DVI is not OK ...
in that it contains difficult PostScript commands. They should 
(perhaps better) be avoided.

[RK] > However, since both, xdvi and dvips use Ghostscript in order to render
[RK] > PostScript code (maybe in a slightly different way) and pstricks
[RK] > interacts directly with the PostScript interpreters, some more
[RK] > investigations are necessary.  And it'seven possible that different
[RK] > versions of Ghostscript behave differently.

I have actually tried to update Ghostscript by apt-get, but was told 
that no newer version is available (for Lubuntu 14.04, under Ubuntu 
you must do something special to get more recent or development versions, 
which I haven't tried).

So Reinhard has mentioned pstricks. Maybe pstricks has parts that are 
too difficult for DVI viewers and that the user can avoid.

I have had very little experience with and knowledge with PostScript, 
and have never invoked pstricks. I think my impression once was that 
some DVI viewers are very good in displaying PostScript, while it has 
never been claimed that there is a DVI viewer that can display 
everything that can displayed via the .ps file.

Remember: the (original) subject is whether it is worth "buying" TeX Live, 
depending on two technical problems (which is the first one 
and which is the second one?). Is TeX Live "responsible" for
xdvi or pstricks? Is TeX Live "sold"? Personally, I use a 
Debian version of TeX Live (while downloading and  installing
many packages manually) and have paid nothing apart from 
worrying about missing font sources (AMD vs. i386) or rather: 
finding out why a Debian TeX Live package remained "unconfigured"
-- also related to (changing) Debian TeX Live directory structures.

Curious

    Uwe.