NAME
dvi2tty - preview a dvi-file on an ordinary ascii terminal
SYNOPSIS
dvi2tty [ options ] dvi-file
DESCRIPTION
dvi2tty converts a TeX DVI-file to a format that is apprporiate for
terminals and lineprinters. The program is intended to be used for
preliminary proofreading of TeX-ed documents. By default the output is
directed to the terminal, possibly through a pager (depending on how
the program was installed), but it can be directed to a file or a pipe.
The output leaves much to be desired, but is still usefull if you want
to avoid walking to the laserprinter (or whatever) for each iteration
of your document.
Since dvi2tty produces output for terminals and lineprinters the
representation of documents is naturally quite primitive. Fontchanges
are totally ignored, which implies that special symbols, such as
mathematical symbols, get mapped into the characters at the
corresponding positions in the "standard" fonts.
If the width of the output text requires more columns than fits in one
line (c.f. the -w option) it is broken into several lines by dvi2tty
although they will be printed as one line on regular TeX output devices
(e.g. laserprinters). To show that a broken line is really just one
logical line an asterisk (``*'') in the last position means that the
logical line is continued on the next physical line output by dvi2tty.
Such a continuation line is started with a a space and an asterisk in
the first two columns.
Options may be specified in the environment variable DVI2TTY. Any
option on the commandline, conflicting with one in the environment,
will override the one from the environment.
Options:
-o file
Write output to file ``file''.
-p list
Print the pages chosen by list. Numbers refer to TeX-page
numbers (known as \count0). An example of format for list is
``1,3:6,8'' to choose pages 1, 3 through 6 and 8. Negative
numbers can be used exactly as in TeX, e g -1 comes before -4 as
in ``-p-1:-4,17''.
-P list
Like -p except that page numbers refer to the sequential
ordering of the pages in the dvi-file. Negative numbers don't
make a lot of sense here...
-w n Specify terminal width n. Legal range 16-132. Default is 80.
If your terminal has the ability to display in 132 columns it
might be a good idea to use -w132 and toggle the terminal into
this mode as output will probably look somewhat better.
-q Don't pipe the output through a pager. This may be the default
on some systems (depending on the whims of the SA installing the
program).
-f Pipe through a pager, $PAGER if defined, or whatever your SA
compiled in (often ``more''). This may be the default, but it is
still okay to redirect output with ``>'', the pager will not be
used if output is not going to a terminal.
-F Specify the pager program to be used. This overides the $PAGER
and the default pager.
-Fprog Use ``prog'' as program to pipe output into. Can be used to
choose an alternate pager (e g ``-Fless'').
-l Mark pagebreaks with the two-character sequence ``^L''. The
default is to mark them with a formfeed character.
-u Don't make any attempts to find special Scandinavian characters.
If such characters are in the text they will map to ``a'' and
``o''. This is probably the default outside of Scandinavia.
(The SA made the decision when the program was installed.)
-s Try to find the special Scandinavian characters that on most (?)
terminals in Scandinavia are mapped to ``{|}[\]''. This can be
the default, and output from files not containing these special
characters will be identical regardless of this option.
FILES
/usr/ucb/more probably the default pager.
ENVIRONMENT
PAGER the pager to use.
DVI2TTY can be set to hold commandline options.
SEE ALSO
TeX, dvi2ps
AUTHOR
Svante Lindahl, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Improved C version: Marcel Mol
{seismo, mcvax}!enea!ttds!zap
marcel@duteca.UUCP
BUGS
Blanks between words get lost quite easy. This is less likely if you
are using a wider output than the default 80.
Only one file may be specified on the commandline.
7 June 1986 DVI2TTY(Local)