[tlbuild] dvi test?

[Richard Koch]

Folks,

Yesterday I simplified John's source file. The file I produced works if the source ends with "e", but crashes using R if the source ends with "el".

Later John reported that this experiment failed for him. He sent me his version of my source and his dvi output.

I typeset his version of the source, which behaved for me exactly as I predicted. However, his dvi file indeed did not crash. It turns out that our source files are exactly the same, but our dvi files are different. I enclose below our common source files, and the two different dvi files.

Using cmp, the two dvi files differ at the top in an anticipated way, because the dvi contains the date and time of creation. After that they agree as draftcopy is processed. But at 00000330, which looks like the very end of draftcopy to an amateur like me, they diverge slightly.  By the end, one file is 4 bytes longer than the other.

Let me explain exactly how I typeset files. I'm using TeX Live 2021, updated to the latest changes, but otherwise unmodified. I have no extra local files. This is Apple's latest Arm portable running the latest release Monterey (but not the just released beta).

I typeset with TeXShop, but as an experiment I also typeset the source from the command line with

	latex koch.tex

and with

	pdflatex -output-format dvi koch.tex

Both dvi files crashed in the expected manner.

As I was finishing this email, John wrote after using a different machine to try this source, and now he can reproduce the bug!

All this means that the actual dvi file seems to depend on which Mac is being used to typeset. I tend to jump to conclusions and colleagues with common sense then pull me back. So I'll jump. Maybe this isn't a bug in xdvi at all. Maybe it is a bug in the generation of dvi files on the Mac. If I'm not mistaken, pdftex is actually used in TeX Live 2021 for all jobs except plain TeX jobs. This change happened fairly recently; there was a time when the original TeX was used for LaTeX.

I enclose the common source, and our two dvi files. This particular dvi file should crash using R. Mine does but John's doesn't.


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