[tex-live] texdoc can't find texmf.cnf

David Kastrup dak at gnu.org
Mon Jun 23 11:05:54 CEST 2008


"Greg  Gamble" <gregg at maths.uwa.edu.au> writes:

> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 03:40:11AM +0200, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:
>> Arthur Reutenauer scripsit (23.06.2008 03:11)
>> >   By the way, Jonathan, I noticed you used open for DVI files, but I
>> > don't think it would really work for most people: users would have to
>> > not only get the X server running, but also to make the association from
>> > DVI files to xdvi (or some other DVI viewer program), which seems rather
>> > unlikely to me; I have the impression xdvi would serve more users.  Of
>> > course, it still means you need to have xdvi in your path and to launch
>> > X11.app, but I feel you would get a better hit rate with the latter than
>> > with open.
>> > 
>> In an ideal world, we shouldn't need to bother about dvi (and ps), since every
>> documentation should be available in pdf format.  There's currently 221 dvi
>> files in texlive: all of them are on my (mid-term) to-kill list :-)
>
> Hmm! I for one completely disagree with you. DVI files are smaller ... while
> kdvi is crap, xdvi is an excellent program ... it renders fast on the
> screen, has every command available via keyboard accelerators ... in
> particular, if I want to get to page 34, I type: 34g in the window ...
> I can get resizing of the page also by say typing: 5s in the window.

PDF are standalone.  In my ideal world, CTAN would carry PDF, and an
installed TeXlive would carry everything that can be represented by DVI
in DVI: TeXlive documentation does not need to be standalone.  The fonts
and stuff for viewing are there.

> xpdf is not a bad program, but it is slower to render on the screen
> and navigation requires the mouse. There's a nice feature that I can
> grab text with the mouse and paste into another document, which I
> can't seem to do with xdvi.

Huh?  Switch "Modes" to "Text Selection" and then you can do this with
the mouse.

-- 
David Kastrup


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