[yandytex] creating 6 x 9 .pdf files -- without Distiller

[Christina Thiele]

I have a curious ;-) working environment in that almost all my TeX
work is on a unixbox. But adding fonts for TeX to a unixbox is a
challenge -- my husband's the sysadmin, not the TeX person, and I
can't explain the half-dozen or so file format locations to save my
life, so there we are -- I don't get new fonts ...

However -- Y&YTeX is a treat when it comes to installing new fonts.
Which I did, with Baskerville. Via our network, I can now very
cleverly (no ... not my cleverness -- my sys admin's ;-) ) use Y&YTeX
from the laptop, on source files that reside on the unixbox.
And I get my Baskerville.

The problem comes when I need .pdf files ... I always use dvips,
then ps2pdf to get my .pdf files. Can't do that with Y&YTeX.
And yet ... I had a suspicion that this had come up in some form
a few years ago ...

I went trolling through old mail in the yandytex list and found a
message from John Hodgson, 13/09/05, wherein he replied to a
query from Vinoth Kumar:

=========   part of John's message:
       ...

       dvipsone -d=[output].ps -l=442*663 c:[source].dvi

       Where the l parameters are the page size (width * height) in
       points (72 points=1 inch). The numbers above produce UK metric
       royal page size 156 x 234 mm.

       The resulting .ps file should distill to the correct size.
=========

Me, I need 6 x 9 inches, so:

    6 x 72pt = 432
    9 x 72pt = 648

which yields the following command line (ugly paths, I know -- but
leave it alone):

    c:\yandy\dvipsone\dvipsone -d=tester6by9.ps -l=432*648 
original-filename.dvi

I then took the new .ps file from the laptop, copied it to the unixbox,
where I used ps2pdf with these parameters:

    ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 
-dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true tester6b9.ps

Note: the `***/printer' option up there ensures that even the Base 14
fonts are embedded.

I then read the .pdf file into the Reader and -- by gar! -- the darn
thing shows up as a 6 x 9 product! I am thrilled to death!

So thanks again to John Hodgson, who laid out the basic details two
years ago ;-) . And perhaps this summary will help others who need
to get around Distiller.

Ch.