[OS X TeX] .dvi files

[Maarten Sneep]

On 4 feb 2005, at 12:45, Lawrence Paulson wrote:

> I'm writing a paper jointly with somebody who's using Linux and we 
> need to use dvi format. However, "latex" from the command line appears 
> to generate pdf files.

just share the source, make sure all figures are available in eps and 
pdf, and run whatever you like, but that is just me.

> My tex system comes from Gerben Wierda's i-installer. It seems that 
> /usr/bin/latex is a symlink:

AFAIK, i-Installer doesn't install anything at all in /usr/bin/, I 
guess something's messed up here.

> /usr/bin/latex -> /usr/local/teTeX/bin/powerpc-apple-darwin6.8/latex
>
> Given that it isn't pdflatex, I'd hope it would generate a dvi file, 
> but it doesn't. What should I do?

Now, latex is a symlink to pdfetex on current installations. Yes, that 
is right, latex is dead, long live latex: pdfetex is used in its dvi 
producing mode for all traditional tex based dvi producing formats 
(except plain tex, which is still the traditional tex). However, it is 
possible to set a macro that switches on pdf production.

If you want to check whether you're running pdflatex, do not check for 
the existence of \pdfoutput (it _will_exist, but tells you nothing 
about pdflatex or latex). Use the ifpdf package instead. Note that most 
graphics and driver dependent packages can figure out for themselves 
whether they are producing dvi or pdf.

Maarten

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