Re: latex *pk files in /var?
Thank you for your answer Alan!
On Tue, Apr 03, 2001 at 04:58:32PM -0400, Alan Shutko wrote:
> Marcelo Chiapparini <chiappa@uerj.br> writes:
>
> > after running xdvi I noted that several *pk files appeared in
> > /var/spool/texmf/pk/ljfour/public/cm. Why this?
>
> The Computer Modern fonts (the default latex fonts) are in Metafont, a
> scalable font language developed by Knuth to go with TeX. In order to
> display those characters, xdvi and dvips run metafont to create pk
> fonts, which are bitmaps at a certain resolution and associated with a
> certain device.
>
> Since this can take some time, those bitmaps are cached in
> /var/spool/texmf/pk, so the next time you view a document using the
> same fonts, the bitmaps don't have to be generated.
>
> (This is a bit of a simplification, but it's good enough for most work.)
>
Marcelo
--
Marcelo Chiapparini
DFT-IF/UERJ
chiappa@uerj.br
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