[OS X Emacs] Re: Can't Make Doc-View Work

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 11.03.2010 um 17:46 schrieb David Reitter:

> what are the advantages of doc-view?

You can look at common graphics files which are not supported by GNU  
Emacs (image-mode) and without needing any external applications, just  
some small utilities. Mac OS X has no viewers for PS, EPS, or DVI,  
just convertors for the first two types. Because of the need for a  
built-in viewer for PS, EPS, PDF, DVI doc-view was developed.

To view DVI files, which AFAIK only TeX produces, you need dvipdfm  
which comes with TeX. Otherwise dvips is used, which comes with TeX as  
well. It produces PS output (dvipdfm produces PDF). To view PS or PDF  
file types just Ghostscript is needed, which is an utility no-one,  
presumingly, wants to miss.

>  Can one copy text out of PDF with Emacs, or use search functions?


No. Who needs this? And for what? Isn't it much easier to copy from  
the TeX source?! Do you copy texts from TIFF or PNG files or the SVG  
and bitmap files which are used in GNU Emacs to report the incorrect  
spelling of a button's title text? Anyway, when you install the xpdf  
suite you, or doc-view, can use pdftotext to extract text from the PDF  
file.

The doc-view documentation mentions search functions. I don't know  
whether I ever used one...

--
Mit friedvollen Grüßen

   Pete

Theoretischer Unterbau, der:
	Aussage über einen hypothetischen Teil einer Fernsehansagerin