[9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[lucio]

In my quest to figure out what binutils need for GCC-4.2.3, I want to
PDF-print the BFD texinfo files (speak now if that's a bad idea, but
HTML doesn't cut it with me for a number of reasons).

So I (re)compiled TeX on Plan 9, successfully.

Now I need to figure out how to produce PS from the bdf/doc directory.
There is nothing obvious about TeX, so I'm begging for the few
commands that ought to do the job, looking at /rc/bin/tex and friends
give me no hint.

Sorry to be so dense.

++L

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[erik quanstrom]

> Now I need to figure out how to produce PS from the bdf/doc directory.
> There is nothing obvious about TeX, so I'm begging for the few
> commands that ought to do the job, looking at /rc/bin/tex and friends
> give me no hint.
>
> Sorry to be so dense.
>
> ++L

dvips doesn't work?

- erik

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[lucio]

> dvips doesn't work?

TeX doesn't work :-(

I can't get to produce the DVIs, the command line/interpreter
interface is beyond me.

++L

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[erik quanstrom]

> > dvips doesn't work?
>
> TeX doesn't work :-(
>
> I can't get to produce the DVIs, the command line/interpreter
> interface is beyond me.
>
> ++L

minooka; cat > hello.tex
hello, world
\bye
<eof>minooka; tex hello.tex
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.2)
(hello.tex [1] )
Output written on hello.dvi (1 page, 224 bytes).
Transcript written on hello.log.
minooka; ls -l hello.dvi
--rw-rw-r-- M 5564 quanstro quanstro 224 Mar 11 14:58 hello.dvi
minooka; page hello.dvi
converting from dvi to postscript...
reading through postscript...
minooka; dvips hello.dvi

- erik

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[lucio]

> <eof>minooka; tex hello.tex
> This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.2)

Works as documented.  But the same with, say, core.texi, gives me an
error, presumably because the texinfo.tex macros are not preloaded.
So I need some advice on how to combine the two (or more) documents.
The texi2dvi script supplied with texinfo is way too arcane for my
understanding.  I need a simple "rc" equivalent.

++L

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[Robert Raschke]

Lucio writes:
>> <eof>minooka; tex hello.tex
>> This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.2)
>
> Works as documented.  But the same with, say, core.texi, gives me an
> error, presumably because the texinfo.tex macros are not preloaded.
> So I need some advice on how to combine the two (or more) documents.
> The texi2dvi script supplied with texinfo is way too arcane for my
> understanding.  I need a simple "rc" equivalent.
>

The .texi file is not actually TeX.

The GNU Texinfo package uses TeX as one of the intermediate components
when creating PDF output, and it uses other tools to create plain
text, .info, etc.  So, I guess, you need to port texinfo.  Maybe only
trying to isolate the code that creates the TeX intermediate file is
viable?  Although, I wouldn't be surprised if that uses Perl or
somesuch.

Sorry for not being helpful,
Robby

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[lucio]

> The .texi file is not actually TeX.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> Sorry for not being helpful,

You were, pity about the delay.  It's nice to have one's suspicions
confirmed.

++L

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[Jeff Sickel]

I'd highly recommend going the pdftex route instead http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/)
.  Pdftex generates much more compatible PDF files that the dvips
route--aka, dvips output prints to paper fine, looks horrid on most
PDF viewers.

Now if I could only get more time in the day--as the time change to
save the US money myth has been debunked by statistics from Indiana.

-jas

On Mar 12, 2008, at 7:09 AM, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:

>> The .texi file is not actually TeX.
>>
>> [ ... ]
>>
>> Sorry for not being helpful,
>
> You were, pity about the delay.  It's nice to have one's suspicions
> confirmed.
>
> ++L
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[Hongzheng Wang]

Although the quality of pdf files produced by dvips and ps2pdf (the
tex engine in most tex distributions have been set to pdftex even when
dvi format is selected) might not be the same as that outputed
directly by pdftex, the problems of appearance is not the key.  Some
files look horrid on, say acroread, is due to the raster type3 fonts
in fact.  In another word, by sticking to type1 fonts only, no
distinguishable differences of appearance could be found for the two
distinct producing chains.

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 11:02 PM, Jeff Sickel <jas@corpus-callosum.com> wrote:
> I'd highly recommend going the pdftex route instead http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/)
>  .  Pdftex generates much more compatible PDF files that the dvips
>  route--aka, dvips output prints to paper fine, looks horrid on most
>  PDF viewers.
>
>  Now if I could only get more time in the day--as the time change to
>  save the US money myth has been debunked by statistics from Indiana.
>
>  -jas

--
HZ

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[Russ Cox]

> I'd highly recommend going the pdftex route instead
> http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/)
> .  Pdftex generates much more compatible PDF files that the dvips
> route--aka, dvips output prints to paper fine, looks horrid on most
> PDF viewers.

Whether the files generated by dvips look okay in PDF viewers
depends on whether they embed bitmap or vector versions of
the fonts.

On Plan 9, if you run

	dvips file.dvi >file.ps
	ps2pdf file.ps file.pdf

then you will get a PDF that looks as good on screen as
anything generated by pdftex.

The PostScript file.ps itself may not be too portable, because it
will refer to PostScript versions of the TeX fonts, which are
installed as part of the Plan 9 TeX package but not so
common elsewhere.  To embed full copies of the fonts
in the output, creating a larger PostScript file, use

	dvips -Ppsfonts file.dvi >file.ps

If you want to embed crappy-looking bitmap fonts
that could take a long time to generate (the default
on most Unix TeX installations), you can use

	dvips -Pbitmapfonts file.dvi >file.ps

All this isn't to say that a pdftex port wouldn't be nice;
it's just not necessary to create screen-readable PDFs.

Of course, even with the default Unix TeX installations,
you can avoid this problem by using PostScript fonts
like Times-Roman instead of the Computer Modern fonts.

Russ

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[Joel C. Salomon]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Jeff Sickel <jas@corpus-callosum.com> wrote:
> I'd highly recommend going the pdftex route instead http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/)

Except the PDF library they're using is written in C++.  I found that
out when I was looking into porting luatex (which is pdftex with lua
scripting so it can support Unicode & OpenType fonts).

--Joel

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[Paweł Lasek]

That might be an interesting case for Plan 9 GCC port - May I also
suggest XeTeX? I didn't check it fully, but it directly uses
TrueType/OpenType fonts. Unfortunately, it outputs only PDF or it's
own internal xdvi format (incompatible with normal dvi).

On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 7:17 PM, Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalomon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Jeff Sickel <jas@corpus-callosum.com> wrote:
>
> > I'd highly recommend going the pdftex route instead http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/)
>
>  Except the PDF library they're using is written in C++.  I found that
>  out when I was looking into porting luatex (which is pdftex with lua
>  scripting so it can support Unicode & OpenType fonts).
>
>  --Joel
>
>



--
Paul Lasek

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[Hongzheng Wang]

It may be difficult.  XeTeX needs a fonts management layer to handle
Truetype/Opentype fonts, such as fontconfig in Linux.
I am not sure if there is such a library in Plan9.

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 6:12 AM, Paweł Lasek <pawel.lasek@gmail.com> wrote:
> That might be an interesting case for Plan 9 GCC port - May I also
>  suggest XeTeX? I didn't check it fully, but it directly uses
>  TrueType/OpenType fonts. Unfortunately, it outputs only PDF or it's
>  own internal xdvi format (incompatible with normal dvi).
>
>
>
>  On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 7:17 PM, Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalomon@gmail.com> wrote:
>  > On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Jeff Sickel <jas@corpus-callosum.com> wrote:
>  >
>  > > I'd highly recommend going the pdftex route instead http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/)
>  >
>  >  Except the PDF library they're using is written in C++.  I found that
>  >  out when I was looking into porting luatex (which is pdftex with lua
>  >  scripting so it can support Unicode & OpenType fonts).
>  >
>  >  --Joel
>  >
>  >
>
>
>
>  --
>  Paul Lasek
>
>



-- 
HZ

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[lucio]

> That might be an interesting case for Plan 9 GCC port - May I also
> suggest XeTeX? I didn't check it fully, but it directly uses
> TrueType/OpenType fonts. Unfortunately, it outputs only PDF or it's
> own internal xdvi format (incompatible with normal dvi).

Slighty, but not altogether off topic...

The more I look at P9GCC the more concerned I become.  It is an
enormous vicious circle: for every feature you think you can address,
you discover one or more preconditions that require some of your
objectives to have already been satisfied.

My current line of attack is to use NetBSD as a cross-platform
development tool, but even that has its shortcomings: my current
stumbling block is the need to use ./configure to construct the BFD
library with P9 "aout" as the output format.  But then again, I still
can't really figure that part of the binutils out, they are so tangled
up.

A day or two face to face with Ian Lance Taylor or one of the other
Cygwin developers may solve a lot of problems, of course.

++L

Re: [9fans] TeX - Plan 9 model

[lucio]

>> I can't get to produce the DVIs, the command line/interpreter
>> interface is beyond me.

After much sweat, it turned out to be as simple as I was expecting all
along but only figured out after reading half the Texinfo manual:

	tex bfd.texinfo
	dvips | page -w

The various *.texi files were all red herrings that led me astray.

++L

PS: I'm not really any wiser now, but at least I now know that I have
to figure some things out the hard way.  Until now I kept hoping.