Bug#337805: tetex-bin: dvips should include document's title in Postscript instead of DVI filename

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Pierre THIERRY <nowhere.man@levallois.eu.org> wrote:

> Scribit Frank Küster dies 07/11/2005 hora 13:53:
>> This would really be nice, but there's a problem:  Currently this
>> information is not available in the dvi file.
>
> I was fearing that...
>
>> It isn't impossible, however, since a dvi file can contain "special"
>> commands
>
> Would it be a deep change, or a minor one, like just changing what the
> \title command outputs in some document classes? Or even a global
> package applicable to nearly every LaTeX class?

I don't know the class internals "by heart", but I would think that it's
not a big problem to do this.  Since \title has only a single argument,
it's probably as simple as

\let\origtitle\title
\renewcommand{\title}[1]{%
  % stuff needed for the DVIPS specials
  \origtitle{#1}
}

> I think it would maybe still be feasible outside dvips, if really
> needed, as a filter that maybe reads something in the .aux file and
> alters the DVI file. Dunno if this is a viable alternative.

If you want to do it without altering dvips, you would have to alter the
PS file.  This isn't trivial, but it may be doable if you know
PostScript. 

> I don't know wether I will have competence and time for this, but I'll
> take a look into dvips. Do I have to UTSL, or is there a documentation
> of the DVI format (as for everything in TeX, I think I can count on a
> complete doc, at least for the hacker...).

I don't know of any document dedicated to explain the dvi format, but if
you take tex.web (Knuth's original source file) either from the
tetex-bin sources (in texk/web2c) or from
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-tetex/tetex-bin/trunk/texk/web2c/tex.web?op=file&rev=0&sc=0,
you can run it through weave and tex and get a document with a chapter
called "Device-independent file format".  If you use pdftex, it even has
a Bookmarks pane on the left, so you can easily find it.  As for dvips
itself, I fear there's nothing but the source and the (sometimes
outdated) texinfo manual.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer