Bug#225833: 225833: letter vs A4 in TeX
Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:
> I guess I am missing something, but isn't all this a simple question of
> RTFM? ...
I don't think so. To start with your finish:
> Finally, you can adjust the default settings for geometry.sty
> by putting a copy of
> /usr/share/texmf-{tetex,texlive}/tex/latex/geometry/geometry.cfg
> into
> /etc/texmf/tex/latex/geometry/
> and editing this file as described in the file.
I think we can as well do this as distributors (either in Debian, or TeX
Live).
> First: dvi format *does*not*support* the paper size, you have to specify
> the paper size to the driver:
> dvips -t a5
> dvipdfm -p a5
... or using \special commands, as you describe below.
> So this explains why Kohda-san did arrive at the table where the dvips option
> gives the best results: It works (as specified above) for dvips, xdvi.
> For pdflatex the option pdftex is automatically selected. And I assume that
> dvipdfm(x) also just check the same special as dvips, so that's the reason
> why dvipdfmx with dvips-option worked.
Exactly. And this raises the question whether there is any reason not
to write out dvips specials into the DVI file by default, doesn't it?
> OTOH, if you add the geometry package it selects automatically the pdftex
> driver and the a5paper option from the documentclass is executed, so:
> \documentclass[a5paper]{article}
> \usepackage{geometry}
> and pdfinfo gave me A5 paper as intended. As it should be.
Yes, but why can we get this magic with PDF, but not with DVI?
> Variant b) Use geometry.sty and the correct driver option
> For this you specify the paper size as usual in the documentclass
> options:
> \documentclass[a5paper]{article}
> and furthermore use geometry.sty with the correct driver option:
> \usepackage[driver=dvips]{geometry}
And I would actually *not* like to encourage people to hardcode this
driver selection in their files. Too likely they also do it for
graphicx.sty. graphicx.sty is not error-tolerant AFAIK, and documents
will be wrong or fail if you try pdflatex on such a document; moreover
it's not needed with graphicx, and in principle also not with geometry.
> Finally, for pdflatex, use the option driver=pdftex
That's a superfluous option, IMO it should be deleted from geometry,
since it does not make a difference whether it is specified or not.
> To some it up, using geometry it is currently possible to use
> \usepackage[driver=dvips]{geometry}
> and have the correct paper sizes with all the common drivers.
Which means we might as well use \ExecuteOptions{dvips} in geometry.cfg
and have working documents without any change to the source.
Regards, Frank
--
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
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