Bug#225833: Letter vs A4 again
On Sat, May 13, 2006 at 13:55 -0400, Greg Stark wrote:
> Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@web.de> writes:
>
> > The problem is that (to first order) a DVI file knows nothing about
> > paper sizes. So LaTeX itself does not inform pdfTeX/dvips about the
> > paper size used. This is a problem for producing PDF files, since there
> > the page size has to be explicitly set. Hence a default paper size is
> > used, if the user does not specify the paper size by other means
> > (geometry.sty, hyperref.sty and the KOMA Script classes do come to my
> > mind).
>
> Then what is this red bounding box xdvi shows me that seems to match the paper
> dimensions?
See the -paper section in xdvi(1). It defaults to A4, but texconfig
changes that, too. The packages I mentioned above are some of those that
write additional information (so called \special) into the DVI file.
>From this programs like xdvi or dvips can infer the the right paper
size. That's an information that is otherwise missing in a DVI file.
> In any case I don't think that's quite correct, adding
> [letterpaper] did in fact fix the pdflatex output, but not the dvips output
> (or perhaps it was the other way around).
I am claiming that my statement is correct. Of course, you are free not
to believe me. Same for me, and without an example I don't believe that
the option letterpaper helped you, since this is the default for the
standard LaTeX classes.
> > texconfig(-sys) paper letter
>
> How would I have found out about this except reading the various bug reports
> on this issue?
Reading documentation like the allready mentioned TETEXDOC or teTeX-FAQ
would help.
> In fact I've never seen texconfigsys mentioned anywhere, even
> in those bug reports.
That is not surprising, since texconfig-sys is new in teTeX 3.0. See
TETEXDOC for details.
cheerio
ralf
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