Bug#225833: 225833: letter vs A4 in TeX
On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 10:09:36AM +0900, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:22:27 -0800, Ross Boylan wrote:
>
> > So I tried with A4, since my default is now letterpaper. The pdf seems
> > to be OK, but the result of dvips is letter size according to gv.
>
> I've tested a behavior of geometry package with a5paper (not
> default in any meaning) and the results are as follows.
>
> documentclass[a5paper] \usepackage{geometry} \usepackage[dvips]{geometry}
> dvips bad bad ok
> xdvi bad bad ok
> pdflatex bad ok ok
> dvipdfmx bad bad ok
>
> So I believe \usepackage[dvips]{geometry} works fine with any
> 'standard' drivers.
>
> I like flexibility of TeX's way/manner of handling papersize
> much more than simple 'convenient' way but I can understand
> that many users of US (or countries of letter size?) think the
> problem very inconvenient so I think it is good to document
> what one should do to fix the problem more clearly somewhere
> untill we will get a complete fix.
>
> Regards, 2007-1-30(Tue)
>
Thanks for your thorough investigation. By the way, is that with
tetex or texlive?
The geometry package indicates it has 4 driver options, which are
mutually exclusive. pdftex and vtex are selected automatically when
you use the appropriate program. dvipdfm is described as "works like
dvips except landscape correction." And dvips is the remaining one.
So it sounds as if the only problem area might be dvipdfm whenever the
landscape correction (whatever that is) is relevant. My understanding
is that, if one has source, pdf(la)tex is superior anyway. I'm also
not sure if the pdftex setting is relevant on Debian, since it's
actually using etex underneath.
I've noticed one other nook: I have an xdvi that I started before I
ran texconfig-sys to set the default to letter. In xdvi's print
dialogue I keep seeing dvips options: -t a4, even with dvi files
produced since I switched to letter. I guess this is just a corollary
of \usepackage{geometry} being inadequate, and the fact that the
program doesn't re-read the defaults once it is started.
Anyway, the BOTTOM LINE with the current Debian setup seems to be that
if you want to specify page size explicitly, and have that respected
by all post-processing tools, you need to use
\usepackage[dvips,xxxx]{geometry}, where xxx is the papersize.
Apparently xxx can either be "paper=letterpaper" or just
"letterpaper".
And if you want to set defaults for all the tools when you don't have
an explicit papersize, use texconfig-sys paper xxxx. In this case xxx
can only take the values "a4" or "letter" NOT any other sizes and NOT
a4paper or letterpaper.
Probably if you have a paper size other than a4 or letter you are just
out of luck with some of the tools.
Ross
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