Re: Changing default dvi viewer.

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 08.02.2008 um 21:18 schrieb Ralf Angeli:

> This is a very bad idea since you will have to check if something
> changed in texdoc every time the TeX distribution is updated unless  
> you
> don't mind missing new features and bug fixes or dealing with  
> potential
> incompatibilities.

This isn't such a big issue. TeX Live updates happen once in two  
years, before 2006 it was once per year. We're already in the middle  
of February and no TeX Live 2008 DVD has been announced yet. I had to  
update my texdoc copy in four years once (I have saved the elder  
version in ~/bin, last change: a few days before summer 2007 began).

> In addition you lose the capability of passing the paper size to the
> viewer.  So this is an exceptionally bad suggestion for the case at  
> hand
> where a DVI viewer is being dealt with.


The latter is true, and I did not emphasise enough that David should  
only change one xdvi entry with texdoc (it is so obvious to me), the  
one that uses his default paper size. This is my fault! Next time  
I'll try to do a better job.

This xdvi incapability can be a much smaller problem when TeX users  
would understand that they are using pdfTeX, and that the DVI output  
is necessary only in just a few cases with use of special packages,  
mostly related with PostScript graphics. When TeX users would allow  
pdfTeX to directly create PDF, then the PDF viewer would not need to  
be told the paper size or its direction, because this is recorded in  
the PDF file, and then a dozen of different xdvi calls would not be  
necessary.

Anyway, once the error of changing too much was done, the original  
setup can easily be re-established by just commenting the  
customisation. Now one is offered another chance to make just the  
necessary changes, and after saving this, one can look at both  
customisation expressions and try to find an optimum. And for this  
one can "expand" the one-liners to multi-liners to see which  
expression matches which case.

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

  Pete

Increase the size of your bike by at least *five* inches!