[tex-k] dvips Z option and Zandt's alt-rule.pro revisited

[Michael Shell]

 Greetings,

Back in November 8, 2003, Tasuki Yamamoto posted that the dvips -Z option
negates Timothy Van Zandt's alt-rule.pro algorithm. I got around to
looking into why, and the reason is simple. Without the -Z option,
dvips loads:

<tex.pro><alt-rule.pro> ...

but with the -Z option it loads:

<tex.pro><alt-rule.pro><texc.pro> ...

and texc.pro overrides the previous alt-rule.pro definitions.

The above assumes a config.ps with:

h tex.pro
h alt-rule.pro

However, there does not seem to be a way to tell dvips that
alt-rule.pro needs to always be loaded after the texc.pro
file.

Of course, one way around the problem is to use the
alt-rule.pro way of doing things directly in the tex.pro
and texc.pro files - which, IMHO, is the best way to go.

I would like to know why Zandt's algorithm never became
the standard way dvips does things - it seems superior,
especially when producing PDF from PS.

Barring making Zandt's algorithm the default, is there
a way to tell dvips to always include alt-rule.pro after
the tex(c).pro files regardless if the user specifies
-Z or not? If not, there should be.

 Mike Shell