[OS X TeX] Re: pdflatex with dvi-output

[RS]

On 10.11.2005 14:41, Michael Hoppe wrote:
> Werter Peter,
> 
>> Your 'Fehler' is that you assume, microstyle and DVI work together.

That's not a fehler. micro_type_ does work with dvi output as long as
pdftex (in contrast to normal tex) is being run. The only thing that
does not work is *automatic* expansion of the fonts. Whenever you want
to employ font expansion with DVI output, you have to create the
expanded fonts in advance.

By default, microtype will switch off font expansion if being run in dvi
mode, since it seems rather unlikely that those expanded instances
exist. However, Michael is explicitly asking for it, so he gets it, of
course.

>> I think microstyle is clever enough to find it's useless when there
>> is no PDF output intended,
> 
> It's not

... useless, I hope you mean.

> but this is not my point.  My question is:
> 
> Is there a command-line-equivalent to putting "\pdfoutput=0" in the
> source file?

But you've already found it: -output-format=dvi

Let me explain why it fails with this option but *seems* to work with
\pdfoutput=0:

When you run pdftex with the command line option, you give microtype the
chance to adjust some commands to that fact, ie. to not autoexpand
fonts. Therefore, pdftex is looking for the expanded fonts and since it
cannot find them, is trying to create them and fails. There's nothing
you can do about this, except creating the expanded instances of the fonts.

If, on the other hand, you issue \pdfoutput=0 *after* microtype has been
loaded, you cheat on it. That is, when it is being loaded, it is made
believe that pdf output will be created, hence it will try to use
autoexpansion. Autoexpansion, however, see above, does not work with dvi
output. The fact that it does not crash does not mean that you can
actually view the file. Have you tried viewing it in a dvi viewer or to
run dvips on it? Both will fail to create the expanded instances of the
fonts.

The golden rule is to *never* change \pdfoutput after any packages have
been loaded. This only brings about confusion. Not only with microtype
but with many other packages, too.

Regards,
Robert.

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