Re: dvips default behaviour

>>>>> "Urs" == Urs Thuermann <[email protected]> writes:

  > William John Murray <[email protected]> writes:
  >> The dvips program defaults to piping its output to a
  >> printer. This is confusing, and can cost money. The normal form
  >> of convert commands, like pdf2ps, produce a file as the default
  >> output (with a trailing hyphen indicating standard out) but
  >> dvi2ps is an exception.

  > I definitely would like such a change, too.  Although you can
  > change that behavior yourself in ~/.dvipsrc, I think output to a
  > file should be the default.  IMHO printing should only be done if
  > you request that explicitly by lpr(1) or by use of the -P option
  > in dvips.  I even wouldn't mind if dvips couldn't print to printer
  > at all and you would have to write "dvips | lpr" to get that.
  > After all, we're on Unix where one tool does one job well and
  > doesn't try to duplicate the functionality of another tool.

I must admit that I had to pay some money a few years ago when I
installed a new version of teTeX.  I assumed that the dvips output
goes to a file until I had been told by phone that the paper tray is
empty (after a few hundred pages).

Today, new versions of teTeX do not overwrite configuration files.

Thomas asked on one of the teTeX mailing lists which default behaviour
people prefer and most people voted for sending the output directly
to the printer.

Don't know whether people would decide different today.  The problems
we are talking about are not new.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
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