Bug#127893: Throwing out the dvips baby with the security bathwater

[Barak Pearlmutter <bap@cs.unm.edu>]

Package: tetex-bin
Version: 1.0.7+20011202-2
Severity: important

I cannot find a way to re-enable the dvips "security mode" which
refuses to run subprocesses specified in the dvi file.  This means
that latex files using sophisticated graphics and doing their
convertion from bitmap format to postscript at dvips time fail.

You'd think "dvips -R0" would turn it back on, as per "dvips --help"
with its "R*" entry, where the "*" mean to use a zero to turn the
feature off.  But that doesn't work!  And the dvips info documentation
has the little "*" removed from its "R" entry, which is not consistent
with "dvips --help".

I'm flagging this as important because

 (1) it causes previously working latex files to fail to dvips, and

 (2) I'm a latex jock and even *I* can't find any way to get dvips
     back into insecure mode.  Ie, no simple workaround.