\specials''
such as those produced using the PStricks macros. In order to use
PostScript effectively, three elements are required:
.dvi files to PostScript,
DVI to PostScript.dvi files to PostScript
are available. One widely used example is Tom Rokicki's
dvips, which is free, reliable, and supports a wide range of
host systems. Commercial products are often integ rated with a dvi file
viewer and may offer enhancements such as partial font downloading. The
following discussion is based on dvips. The same approach
can, however, be applied to configuring other programs.
.pk bitmapped
fonts generated by rendering metafont sources directly. In recent years,
processor speeds have increased to the point where excellent performance
for viewing documents can be obtained while rendering fonts as required.
PostScript supports two main types of fonts:
Dvips can use the .pk bitmap fonts generated
using metafont, but since PostScript viewers do not make direct use of
.pk fonts, either each PostScript file must include the fonts
or the TeX bitmapped fonts must be con verted to Type 3 fonts. By using
fonts that can be loaded as required by the viewer (i.e., Adobe
Type 1 outline fonts) the size of the PostScript files can be greatly
reduced. Adobe Type 1 versions of the Computer Modern fonts are available
comme rcially or in the free Bakoma collection. In most cases these fonts
produce printed output that is not visibly different from output produced
using bitmapped .pk fonts. Some commercial .dvi
to PostScript programs do not support the use of .pk fonts
directly. In order to use a .pk font with such programs it is necessary to produce an Adobe Type 3 font using a separate utility.
A number of .dvi file
viewers support a mechanism to include a rendering of a PostScript figure
in a display produced directly from a .dvi file. This
rendering may be embedded in the figure, stored in a separate file, or
generat ed at run-time using a PostScript interpreter.
For typical TeX article, the size of the document is a small fraction (10--100k) of the combined size (1--2M) of the associated Type 1 font files. For such documents, it is important to minimize unnecessary copying of the fonts, both to reduce processing time and to conserve disk space (which may, for example, all ow a document to be saved on a single floppy disk).
dvips, the Bakoma fonts, and Aladdin Ghostscriptdvips, the font map may associate the name of a font with a
disk file, in which case the file will be embedded in a PostScript file
that uses the font. Fonts that are provided by the PostScript interpreter
are called ``printer-resident''. In the case of ghostscript, the font map
file must indicate a location for every font that will be displayed. In order to obtain good performance when using Ghostview/ghostscript to view or print TeX documents, it is helpful to configure Ghostscript to load type 1 versions of the TeX fonts directly. The Bakoma fonts which can be downloaded from any CTAN archive mirror include a suitable FontMap fragment. This allows the PostScript file to be created without fonts, grealty reducing the size of the resulting PostScript file.
Configuration is not difficult, but requires coordination of the
configuration files for
In summary, the following files must be provided for each configuration:
dvips and ghostscript.
dvips will require a configuration for ghostview and a
configuration for printing (perhaps using ghostscript as a pr int filter
to permit printing postscript documents on non-postscript printers). One
configuration should be chosen as the default and the necessary changes
made to the config.ps file. The other configuration is
selected using the -P option on the dvips
commmand line. For example, to invoke the ghostview configuration by
specifying ``-P gv'', the file ``gv.cfg'' would
contain:
* Ghostview configuration for
If ghostscript is used for printing, the same map files can be used for
both viewing and printing; the only differences between the
.dvips
*
* specify font map for ghostview
p gv.map
* output to file
o
* resolution (affects rules and .pk fonts)
D 144
dvips configuration files would be the output line and the
resolution.
These files are described in the user documentation provided with
dvips configuration (printer.cfg);
dvips font map; and
FontMap).
dvips and ghostscript. Map file templates suitable for
editing to use with dvips (cmfonts.map) and
ghostscript (FontMap fragment) are included with the Bakoma
fonts in the ``etc'' subdirectory.
Related applications
The ghostscript distribution includes a number of utilities that can be
useful to the TeX community. In particular, the file
``ps2ai.ps'' by Jason Olszewski
(olszewsk@splash.princeton.edu) can be used to convert most PostScript
files to editable Adobe Illustrator format. An ``aimaker''
shell script to automate the use of ps2ai.ps and updated
versions are available (anonymous ftp). Adobe Illustrator files can be
edited using many commercial drawing packages, but the TeX fonts often
cause problems. For example, TeX encodes the math minus sign in the ASCII
NUL position. Many drawing programs use ASCII NUL to mark the end of a
character string. A .dvi file created using TeX typically
consists of many short strings. If the default encoding is used with
``ps2ai.ps'', programs which treat NUL as the string
delimiter will drop the minus signs as well as any characters after the
minus in th e string. To avoid such problems,
modified versions of ``aimaker'' and
``ps2ai.ps'' which replace fonts by outline paths are
available. In general, this method is suitable for creating slides and
annotations for color images, but does not achieve the print quality
obtainable using normal text fonts.