Re: Setting papersize in reference cards

On 2025-08-07 12:54:54 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Could someone here please help us understand:
> 
>  . why is this setting needed

I suppose you ask why the following is not sufficient
(for both DVI and PDF).

\totalwidth=11in    % total width of paper
\totalheight=8.5in  % total height of paper

(thus the comments above seem wrong).

>  . what is the default setting for papersize for the DVI output

AFAIK, there is no standard default, i.e. there is no physical
papersize if not provided explicitly. According to the xdvi(1)
man page:

  The default paper size is 21 x 29.7 cm (A4 size).

(for xdvi), but other viewers may have other defaults.

>  . is the proposed change TRT, or could it cause some problems in some
>    locales
>  . is something like that needed for every TeX document that is
>    supposed to support generation of DVI
>  . how come generation of PDF output doesn't need this setting

PDF already has similar settings in the refcard.tex file:

\ifx\pdfoutput\undefined\else   % check if we are using pdfTeX
  \pdfpagewidth=\totalwidth     % width of paper in pdf output
  \pdfpageheight=\totalheight   % height of paper in pdf output
\fi

BTW, the xdvi(1) man page says

  Note that in most cases it's best to specify the paper size in
  the TeX input file via the line

  \usepackage[dvips]{geometry}

  which will be recognized by both dvips and xdvi; in that case
  the use of a `-paper' option should be unnecessary.

But isn't this just for LaTeX?

> I post these questions here in the hope that the TeX expertise on this
> forum will allow us to understand the issue and make correct decisions
> about any changes that need to be done.
> 
> TIA
> 
> P.S. Please CC both me and Vincent on your responses, as we do not
> subscribe to this list.
> 
> P.P.S Apologies if this is the wrong forum; if so, please suggest
> where to post these questions.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <[email protected]> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)