Bug#383781: tetex-bin: dvips can't create files >2GB

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

severity 383781 minor
thanks

Roland Lezuo <e0227059@student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

> Package: tetex-bin
> Version: 3.0-18
> Severity: important
>
> After converting a file including lots of eps files dvips dies with
> this message: "File size limit exceeded"
> File size is 2147483647 bytes.

I don't see how this bug is of severity "important".  Large file support
is something that should be implemented, but if it's missing it is not
an important bug, rather minor or wishlist.  For more information on
this, ask Google or just read
http://www.tug.org/pipermail/tex-k/2004-November/001115.html
(unfortunately, "next year" as Olaf put it has still not come...).

There you can also find a workaround:

,---- Tomas G. Rokicki 
| As a temporary workaround, try
| 
|    dvips foo.dvi -o - >foo.ps
| 
| When I do this, even ancient versions of dvips can generate files
| larger than 2GB . . .
| 
| I believe the dvi format is limited to 2GB itself due to the use
| of byte-offset file pointers within the format (although we could
| easily let them wrap and just simply ignore them; dvips reads
| the dvi file front to back in any case).
| 
| Pity the poor PostScript interpreter that gets to grok these files.
| 
`----

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)