[fptex] Re: fptex digest, Vol 1 #133 - 2 msgs

[John Frampton]

I wrote:

 > Is there any way to set the offsets differently for screen display
 > and printing in Windvi?

Fabrice Popineau replied:

 > No way I know of. But the latest version (0.67.2) should retrieve your
 > printer offsets and use them when printing so that your page is
 > centered. If you don't have the latest version, grab it from
 > ftp://ftp.dante.de/pub/fptex/standalone.

Thanks for the prompt response Fabrice, and thanks for fpTeX. I
can live with the printer problem.  Before fptex/windvi, I used
emtex. It used a separate printer driver which had its own
configuration file, which allowed me to shift things for the
printer and keep the printed material centered in the video
display.  Does anyone have any idea what the problem is?

There is another issue, which I am sure other people have run
into.  On my computer, a new 1.6GHz Windows 2000 machine,
invoking Tex from WinEdt causes the screen to go blank for almost
2 seconds, before the output of Tex appears.  There is another 2
seconds of blank screen on the way back to WinEdt.  I think the
problem is that switching from digital output for my flatscreen
monitor (which Windows uses) to line oriented output from a DOS
program is a big deal for the graphics card (or whatever).  If
output from fptex could be sent through a window, the whole
operation would be much smoother.

The problem is analagous to the problem of invoking cmd.exe from
the desktop. If it is done through a shortcut with output
specified to be a window, rather than full-screen, the process is
instant and smooth.  If full-screen output is specified, or if
cmd.exe is called directly, then there is the 2 second blank
screen both on entering and leaving.  It must be possible to
invoke the cmd.exe interpreter with a parameter to specify a
window output.  That must be what the shortcut does.  I will try
to look in a Windows manual and find out how the appropriate
parameters are passed to cmd.exe, but if anyone knows the
solution, it would be helpful to me.

Thanks,
John Frampton