[pdftex] elementary latex-pdflatex questions

[Haines Brown KB1GRM]

Your remarks much appreciated. 

I retrospect, the problem seems that there was no .ps file, not the 
absence of a .dvi file. In my prior set up, at the command prompt 
after running the master command a second time, all I had to do was 
enter Print. Perhaps this created the needed .ps. In any case, things 
don't work that way anymore.

Your discussion was enough of a clue that I figured out the following 
rule of thumb to print a file:

  a) compile it with C-c C-c latex to produce a .dvi file
  b) generate a .ps file with C-c C-c dvips TAB
  c) print the .ps file: C-c C-c lpr TAB

> > Since I primarily want to print hard copy, I'd like to make the
> > latex command default and the pdflatex command an option. To make
> > latex the default command, there's probably a statement I can put
> > in my .emacs init file such as (setq TeX-command-default "LaTeX"),
> > but I haven't been able to find it.

You run vim, and so, of course, this question lies beyond your domain.

> In my experience the same input file can be used for either sequence. I 
> don't use Emacs but rather Gvim. So it may be that Emacs does some 
> other steps.  Try running from a command line either of the sequences 
> shown above. The first should yield a ps file and the second a pdf file. 

I'll give that a try. 

Thanks, 

Haines Brown