[texworks] dvi -> dvips -> ps2pdf

[Herbert Schulz]

On Jul 14, 2011, at 3:08 PM, sigmundv at gmail.com wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 20:14, Charlie Sharpsteen <chuck at sharpsteen.net>wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 9:17 AM, sigmundv at gmail.com <sigmundv at gmail.com>wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I would just like to point out that one doesn't have to understand neither
>>> dvi nor ps to run the commands "latex" and "dvips".
>>> 
>> 
>> Well, you do have to be careful here---not understanding dvi and ps leads
>> many newcomers to questions like "Why doesn't my PNG file show up in the
>> final PDF!?!?! HELP!!!".
>> 
> 
> You have a point there. On the other hand, any newcomer to LaTeX would
> (definitely should!) have heard the magic sentences "the ONLY image format
> that can be used with LaTeX is eps" and "IF you want to use other image
> formats such as jpeg or png you must compile the document using PDFLaTeX".
> These simple rules can easily be followed without understanding either ps or
> dvi.
> 
> /Sigmund

Howdy,

I think the real answer to the problem of completely typesetting a document (multiple passes of (pdf/xe)latex, bibtex[or biber --- automatically] and makeindex in between [and a final run through dvips and ps2pdf when using latex]) is to use something like latexmk which comes as part of recent distributions of TeX Live and, I believe, MikTeX. Unless you are using some more ``exotic'' packages (like glossaries) which need special processing via makeindex simply building a tool that ``effectively'' does

latexmk -pdfps foo.tex

will completely typeset foo.tex into foo.pdf resolving all cross references, bibligraphies and indexes.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)