and Dvips

Tom Rokicki's dvips is the most widely used DVI-to-PostScript driver. It provides a number of sophisticated features that are not available in 's DVI-to-PostScript code. The distribution includes Tom Kiffe's implementation of dvips, and can call it if you are using System 7 or later. To call dvips, just tick the ``Use DVIPS'' flag in the File menu and then select either of the top two items in the same menu. These items will have changed from ``Print DVI ...'' and ``Print foo.dvi'' to ``DVIPS ...'' and ``DVIPS foo.dvi''. After opening the DVI file, displays a dialog like this: to 2.4in


This dialog is very similar to the one used for low-level PostScript printing (see page [*]). Here are the changes:

When you click on the DVIPS button, will display the selected options and call dvips. The very first time this is done, will ask you to find and select the dvips application. The selected application is remembered for future use. Soon after starting up, dvips loads the config.ps file (stored in the ps sub-folder of the Dvips folder). This sets up various default parameters including the resolution and {\logo METAFONT\null} mode for making missing PK fonts. The config.ps file currently contains suitable parameters for an Apple LaserWriter at 300 dpi. You might want to edit config.ps if you have a different printer. See the dvips manual for more details; the source for this Plain TEX document is the dvips.tex file in the Dvips folder. If you have access to more than one type of PostScript printer then set up config.ps for the most commonly used printer. To select parameters for a different printer, enter ``-P xxx'' in the extra dvips options box. This tells dvips to load config.xxx after config.ps. Of course, you will need to create a file called config.xxx. The config.linohi file defines suitable parameters for a Linotronic typesetter, so to select output for this printer you would enter ``-P linohi''. Note that dvips will only call {\logo METAFONT\null} to build a missing PK font if the ``Make missing PK fonts'' box was checked. If not checked, then dvips (like ) will append a line of information to missfont.log in the PK-files folder. Given foo.dvi as input, dvips will create an output file called foo.ps. (Add ``-o filename'' to the extra options box to create a different file.) When dvips finishes processing you can use the Transfer menu to start up Tom's PrintPS program and print foo.ps. PrintPS does much the same job as 's ``Send PostScript ...'' item. PrintPS also has a handy item that automatically deletes the file after sending it to the printer.

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