# The &kdvi; Manual

Markku
Hihnala

    mah@ee.oulu.fi

Stefan
Kebekus

    kebekus@kde.org

2001-06-05
0.09.02
&underFDL;
2000
Markku Hihnala
Stefan Kebekus

This Handbook describes &kdvi; Version 0.9

KDE
DVI
TeX
LaTeX
device-independent
viewer
dvi viewer
kdvi
xdvi

## Introduction

&kdvi; is a plugin for the &kviewshell; program which allows &kviewshell; to display &DVI;-files which are produced by the TeX typesetting system.

More information about TeX and &DVI; can be found on the homepage of the TeX user group. &kdvi; supports the inclusion of &PostScript; graphics and it supports hyperlinks. More details and the technical specifications can be found in the file `KDVI-features.dvi`.

For up-to-date information, consult kdvi's home page.

## Starting &kdvi;

For convenience there exists a command `kdvi` which calls &kviewshell; with the &kdvi; plugin preloaded. The viewer may thus be started using the command ``kdvi` `somepath/paper.dvi``, or without a file name as &kviewshell; will then allow a file to be opened from a dialog or a menu of recently used files.

The usual parameters handled by &Qt; and &kde; applications also work: ``kdvi` `-style` `windows` `-display` `:0` `-geometry` `400x400+0+0` `-caption` `"DVI"``

For integration with TeX the opened &DVI; file is automatically reloaded when changed.

## The Preferences dialog

The Preferences dialog can be reached by choosing Settings DVI options inside &kviewshell;.

The dialog consists of two tabs, Fonts and Rendering.

### Fonts Options

The following picture shows the options dialog of &kdvi;.

The Fonts dialog
The Fonts dialog

Metafont mode

  These options specify the fonts which &kdvi; will use for rendering. By carefully optimizing the settings here it is possible to improve on the display. However, unless you are an expert in `MetaFont` and know what you are doing, it is not a good idea to change these options.

  Safe values are 1200 dpi / Lexmark for good quality, or 600 dpi / LaserJet 4 for medium quality and faster display.

Generate missing fonts

  Check this if you want &kdvi; to call the `MetaFont` program in the likely case that kdvi wants to display documents which use fonts which are not yet readily made. You most certainly want to set this option.

### Rendering Options

The following picture shows the second options dialog of &kdvi;.

The Rendering dialog
The Rendering dialog

Show PostScript specials

  If this options is checked, &kdvi; will display &PostScript; graphics which are embedded into the &DVI; file.

  If an external &PostScript; file could not be found, &kdvi; will draw a red warning box in its place. Unfortunately, rendering &PostScript; graphics is very slow in the current version of &kdvi;. We will improve on the speed in later versions. If this option is off, &kdvi; will either draw a grey box as a placeholder for the graphics, or it will leave the space blank.

  There is no standard way to embed &PostScript; graphics into a dvi file. It may therefore happen that &kdvi; cannot properly display a graphic which works fine with other programs. Older versions of `xdvi` and `dvips` support the execution of external commands. This is a hight security risk and therefore deliberately not implemented in &kdvi;. Technical information about supported ways to include &PostScript; can be found in an external document. You probably want to set this option.

Hyperlinks

  Check this if you want &kdvi; to display hyperlinks. The appropriate parts of the text will be underlined in blue. You probably want to set this option.

## Printing

This version has a print setup dialog (available from the print dialog) that lets you configure the printing method, n-up program, printer names and spooler command. Printing method selects the external program to use for printing. Available choices are `dvips` and `dvilj4`. If you use `dvips`, you can also have an n-up program called to make 2 or 4 pages per sheet. Select `psnup` (preferred) or `mpage` (may work) if you have that installed in your system.

You may add printer names that will be available in the print dialog.

And last you can change the spooler command (defaults to `lpr`) that is supposed to read standard input. Option `-P` is appended when printing to nondefault printer.

Having setup printing you can use the print dialog where you can select the pages to be printed, which printer or file to use for output and more.

## Q & A

Why is &kdvi; not displaying anything but a busy cursor?

It is possible, that &kdvi; is searching for the pk-fonts from wrong places, and this can be very time consuming if these include network mounted filesystems. You can check for this with `strace` and see below for a cure.

What can I do when &kdvi; does not find my PK-fonts?

You must have correct settings for resolution and `Metafont` mode. If this does not help, you may set the field 'PK Font Path' in Preferences/Fonts to point to the list of directories to be searched for pk-fonts: ``/var/lib/texmf/fonts/pk/ljfour/`:`/some/other/place``. You can make &kdvi; search recursively by adding an extra / at the end of directory name: `/var/lib/texmf/fonts//` (This works like `xdvi`'s `XDVIFONTS` environment variable. There is also good (gnu `info`) documentation available for the kpathsea library that &kdvi; uses for font searching.) This makes &kdvi; usable when you have some other tex system than `tetex` and don't have the `texmf.cnf` file.

How do I get the font generation to work?

If you would like to enable automatic font generation using `MakeTeXPK`, you must also supply correct `Metafont` mode in preferences dialog. When automatic pk-font generation is disabled (menu option) the missing fonts will be logged to file `missfont.log` in the current directory. It is a good idea to check that the font generation commands in `missfont.log` are correct before enabling font generation

## Credits and Licenses

&kdvi;

&kdvi; 0.9 is based on based on the stand-alone-program &kdvi; 0.4.3 by Markku Hihnala. That program is in turn based on xdvi version 18f which has many authors.

Documentation is copyright 2000, 2001, Markku Hihnala mah@ee.oulu.fi and Stefan Kebekus kebekus@kde.org

&underGPL; &underFDL;

## Installation

&kdvi; is part of the kdegraphics module of &kde;.