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XDVI(1) General Commands Manual XDVI(1)
NAME
xdvi - DVI Previewer for the X Window System
SYNOPSIS
xdvi [+[page]] [--help] [-allowshell] [-altfont font] [-anchorposition anchor] [-bg color]
[-browser WWWbrowser] [-copy] [-cr color] [-debug bitmask|string[,string ...]] [-display
host:display] [-dvipspath path] [-editor command] [-expert] [-expertmode flag] [-fg color]
[-findstring string] [-font font] [-fullscreen ] [-gamma g] [-geometry geometry]
[-gsalpha] [-gspalette palette] [-h] [-help] [-hl color] [-hush] [-hushbell] [-hushchars]
[-hushchecksums] [-hushstdout] [-icongeometry geometry] [-iconic] [-install] [-interpreter
path] [-keep] [-l] [-license] [-linkcolor color] [-linkstyle 0|1|2|3] [-margins dimen]
[-mfmode mode-def[:dpi]] [-mgs[n] size] [-mousemode 0|1|2] [-nocolor] [-nofork]
[-noghostscript] [-nogrey] [-nogssafer] [-noinstall] [-nomakepk] [-nomatchinverted]
[-noomega] [-noscan] [-notempfile] [-notype1fonts] [-noxi2scrolling] [-offsets dimen] [-p
pixels] [-paper papertype] [-pause] [-pausespecial special-string] [-postscript flag]
[-rulecolor color] [-rv] [-S density] [-s shrink] [-safer] [-sidemargin dimen]
[-sourceposition line[:col][ ]filename] [-statusline] [-text-encoding encoding]
[-thorough] [-topmargin dimen] [-unique] [-version] [-visitedlinkcolor color]
[-warnspecials] [-watchfile secs] [-wheelunit pixels] [-xoffset dimen] [-yoffset dimen]
[dvi_file]
DESCRIPTION
Xdvi is a program for previewing dvi files, as produced e.g. by the tex(1) program, under
the X window system.
Xdvi can show the file shrunken by various integer factors, and it has a ``magnifying
glass'' for viewing parts of the page enlarged (see the section MAGNIFIER below). This
version of xdvi is also referred to as xdvik since it uses the kpathsea library to locate
and generate font files. In addition to that, it supports the following features:
- hyperlinks in DVI files (section HYPERLINKS),
- direct rendering of PostScript<tm> Type 1 fonts (section TYPE 1 FONTS),
- source specials in the DVI file (section SOURCE SPECIALS),
- string search in DVI files (section STRING SEARCH),
- saving or printing (parts of) the DVI file (sections PRINT DIALOG and SAVE DIALOG).
Xdvi can be compiled with the Motif toolkit or the Xaw (Athena) toolkit (and variants of
it), and the Motif version has a slightly different GUI; these differences are noted be-
low.
Before displaying a page of a DVI file, xdvi will check to see if the file has changed
since the last time it was displayed. If this is the case, it will reload the file. This
feature allows you to preview many versions of the same file while running xdvi only once.
Since it cannot read partial DVI files, xdvik versions starting from 22.74.3 will create a
temporary copy of the DVI file being viewed, to ensure that the file can be viewed without
interruptions. (The -notempfile can be used to turn off this feature).
Xdvi can show PostScript<tm> specials by any of three methods. It will try first to use
Display PostScript<tm>, then NeWS, then it will try to use Ghostscript to render the im-
ages. All of these options depend on additional software to work properly; moreover, some
of them may not be compiled into this copy of xdvi.
For performance reasons, xdvi does not render PostScript specials in the magnifying glass.
If no file name has been specified on the command line, xdvi will try to open the most re-
cently opened file; if the file history (accessible via the File > Open Recent menu) is
empty, or if none of the files in the history are valid DVI files, it will pop up a file
selector for choosing a file name. (In previous versions, which didn't have a file histo-
ry, the file selector was always used; you can set the X resource noFileArgUseHistory to
false to get back the old behaviour.)
OPTIONS
In addition to specifying the dvi file (with or without the .dvi extension), xdvi supports
the following command line options. If the option begins with a `+' instead of a `-', the
option is restored to its default value. By default, these options can be set via the re-
source names given in parentheses in the description of each option.
+page Specifies the first page to show. If + is given without a number, the last page is
assumed; the first page is the default.
-allowshell
(.allowShell) This option enables the shell escape in PostScript specials. (For
security reasons, shell escapes are disabled by default.) This option should be
rarely used; in particular it should not be used just to uncompress files: that
function is done automatically if the file name ends in .Z, .gz, or .bz2. Shell
escapes are always turned off if the -safer option is used.
-altfont font
(.altFont) Declares a default font to use when the font in the dvi file cannot be
found. This is useful, for example, with PostScript <tm> fonts.
-anchorposition anchor
Jump to anchor after opening the DVI file. This is only useful when invoking xdvi
from other applications.
-background color
(.background) Determines the color of the background. Same as -bg.
-bg color
(.background) Determines the color of the background.
-browser browser
(.wwwBrowser) Defines the web browser used for handling external URLs. The value of
this option or resource has the same syntax as the BROWSER environment variable;
see the explanation of that variable in the section `ENVIRONMENT' below for a de-
tailed description. If neither the option nor the X resource wwwBrowser is speci-
fied, the environment variables BROWSER and WWWBROWSER (in that order) are used to
determine the browser command. If these are not set either, the following default
value is used: xdg-open %s:htmlview %s:firefox -remote -remote "openURL(%s,new-win-
dow)":mozilla -remote "openURL(%s,new-window)":netscape -raise -remote
"openURL(%s,new-window)":xterm -e w3m %s:xterm -e lynx %s:xterm -e wget %s
-copy (.copy) Always use the copy operation when writing characters to the display. This
option may be necessary for correct operation on a color display, but overstrike
characters will be incorrect. If greyscale anti-aliasing is in use, the -copy op-
eration will disable the use of colorplanes and make overstrikes come out incor-
rectly. See also -thorough.
-cr color
(.cursorColor) Determines the color of the mouse cursor. The default is the same
as the foreground color.
-debug bitmask|string[,string ...]
(.debugLevel) If nonzero, prints additional information on standard output. The
argument can be either a bitmask specified as a decimal number, or comma-separated
list of strings.
For the bitmask representation, multiple values can be specified by adding the num-
bers that represent the individual bits; e.g. to debug all file searching and open-
ing commands, use 4032 (= 2048 + 1024 + 512 + 256 + 128 + 64). Use -1 to turn on
debugging of everything (this will produce huge output).
For the string representation, use the strings listed in the following table, with
a comma to separate the values; e.g. to debug all file searching and opening com-
mands, use search,expand,paths,hash,stat,open. (The option `kpathsea' is provided
as a shorthand for these.) Note that such a list may need to be quoted to prevent
the shell from interpreting commas or spaces in the list.
The individual numbers and strings have the following meanings:
1 bitmap Bitmap creation
2 dvi DVI translation
4 pk PK fonts
8 batch Batch mode: Exit after
reading the DVI file
16 event Event handling
32 ps PostScript interpreter calls
64 stat Kpathsea stat(2) calls
128 hash Kpathsea hash table lookups
256 open Kpathsea file opening
512 paths Kpathsea path definitions
1024 expand Kpathsea path expansion
2048 search Kpathsea searching
4032 kpathsea All Kpathsea options
4096 htex Hypertex specials
8192 src Source specials
16384 client Client/server mode (see -unique
and -sourceposition options)
32768 ft FreeType library messages (Type 1 fonts)
65536 ft_verbose Verbose FreeType library messages (currently unused)
131072 gui GUI elements
Some of the Kpathsea debugging options are actually provided by Kpathsea; see the
Debugging section in the Kpathsea manual for more information on these.
-density density
(.densityPercent) Determines the density used when shrinking bitmaps for fonts. A
higher value produces a lighter font. The default value is 40. If greyscaling is
in use, this argument does not apply; use -gamma instead. See also the `S' key-
stroke. Same as -S.
-display host:display
Specifies the host and screen to be used for displaying the dvi file. By default
this is obtained from the environment variable DISPLAY.
-dvipspath path
(.dvipsPath) Use path as the dvips program to use when printing. The default for
this is dvips. The program or script should read the DVI file from standard input,
and write the PostScript file to standard output.
-editor editor
(.editor) Specifies the editor that will be invoked when the source-special() ac-
tion is triggered to start a reverse search (by default via Ctrl-Mouse 1). The ar-
gument to this option is a format string in which occurrences of ``%f'' are re-
placed by the file name, occurrences of ``%l'' are replaced by the line number
within the file, and optional occurrences of ``%c'' are replaced by the column num-
ber within the line.
If neither the option nor the X resource .editor is specified, the following envi-
ronment variables are checked to determine the editor command: XEDITOR, VISUAL, and
EDITOR (in this sequence). If the string is found as the value of the VISUAL or ED-
ITOR environment variables, then ``xterm -e '' is prepended to the string; if the
editor is specified by other means, then it must be in the form of a shell command
to pop up an X window with an editor in it. If none of these variables is set, a
warning message is displayed and the command ``xterm -e vi +%l %f'' is used.
If no ``%f'' or ``%l'' occurs in the string, the missing format strings are append-
ed automatically. (This is for compatibility with other programs when using one of
the environment variables).
A new instance of the editor is started each time this command is used; therefore
it is preferable to use an editor that can be invoked in `client' mode to load new
files into the same instance. Example settings are:
emacsclient --no-wait
(older Emacsen)
gnuclient -q
(XEmacs and newer Emacsen)
gvim --servername xdvi --remote
(VIM v6.0+; the `--servername xdvi' option will cause gvim to run a dedicat-
ed instance for the files opened by xdvi.)
nc (nedit)
Note that those strings need to be enclosed into quotes when using them on the com-
mand-line to protect them from the shell; when using them as argument for the .edi-
tor resource in an X resource file, no quotes should be used.
NOTE ON SECURITY: The argument of this option isn't executed as a shell command,
but via exec() to prevent evil tricks with the contents of source specials.
-expert
This option is only supported for backwards compatibility; it is equivalent to -ex-
pertmode 0, which should be preferred.
-expertmode flag
(.expertMode) With an argument of 0, this option switches off the display of the
buttons, scrollbars, the toolbar (Motif only), the statusline and the page list.
These GUI elements can also be (de)activated separately, by combining the appropri-
ate values in the flag argument. This acts similar to the -debug option: The inte-
ger flag is treated as a bitmap where each bit represents one element. If the bit
has the value 1, the element is switched on, if it has the value 0, the element is
switched off. The meaning of the bits is as follows:
1 statusline
2 scrollbars
4 Motif: pagelist, Xaw: buttons and pagelist
8 toolbar (Motif only)
16 menubar (Motif only)
For example, to turn on only the statusline and the scrollbars, use 3 (= 1 + 2).
See also the `x' keystroke, where the bits are addressed by their positions, from 1
to 3 (Xaw) or 5 (Motif), respectively.
If the statusline is not active, all messages that would normally be printed to the sta-
tusline will be printed to stdout, unless the -hushstdout option is used.
-fg color
(.foreground) Determines the color of the text (foreground).
-findstring string
This option triggers a search for string in the DVI file mentioned on the command-
line, similar to forward search (see the description of the sourceposition option):
If there is already another instance of xdvi running on the displaying that DVI
file, it will cause that instance to perform the search instead. The search starts
at the top of the current page of the DVI file.
-font font
(*font) Sets the font used in menus, buttons etc., as described in the X(7x) man
page. The font for child windows can be set separately, e.g.:
xdvi*statusline*font: \
-*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
-foreground color
Same as -fg.
-fullscreen
When this option is used, xdvi will (try to) run in fullscreen mode, with no window
decorations. This option is not guaranteed to work with all windowmanagers/desk-
tops; if you're experiencing problems with it, please use the -geometry option in-
stead, and a suitable window manager setting to remove the window decorations.
When using this option for presentations, you might want to get rid of all the con-
trol widgets as well, using the -expertmode option. This option can also be toggled
at runtime using the fullscreen action (by default bound to Ctrl-l).
-gamma gamma
(.gamma) Controls the interpolation of colors in the greyscale anti-aliasing color
palette. Default value is 1.0. For 0 < gamma < 1, the fonts will be lighter (more
like the background), and for gamma > 1, the fonts will be darker (more like the
foreground). Negative values behave the same way, but use a slightly different al-
gorithm. For color and grayscale displays; for monochrome, see -density. See also
the `S' keystroke.
-geometry geometry
(.geometry) Specifies the initial geometry of the main window, as described in the
X(7x) man page. The geometry of child windows can be set separately, e.g.:
xdvi*helpwindow.geometry: 600x800
-gsalpha
(.gsAlpha) Causes Ghostscript to be called with the x11alpha driver instead of the
x11 driver. The x11alpha driver enables anti-aliasing in PostScript specials, for
a nicer appearance. It is available on newer versions of Ghostscript. This option
can also be toggled with the `V' keystroke.
-gspalette palette
(.palette) Specifies the palette to be used when using Ghostscript for rendering
PostScript specials. Possible values are Color, Greyscale, and Monochrome. The
default is Color.
-h, -help, --help
Prints a short help text with an overview of the command-line options to standard
output.
-hl color
(.highlight) Determines the color of the page border, of the ruler in `ruler mode',
and of the highlighting markers in forward search and string search. The default
is the foreground color.
-hush (.Hush) Causes xdvi to suppress all suppressible warnings.
-hushbell
(.hushBell) Don't sound the X bell when an error occurs.
-hushchars
(.hushLostChars) Causes xdvi to suppress warnings about references to characters
which are not defined in the font.
-hushchecksums
(.hushChecksums) Causes xdvi to suppress warnings about checksum mismatches between
the dvi file and the font file.
-hushstdout
(.hushStdout) Suppresses printing of status messages to stdout. Note that errors
or warnings will still be printed to stderr even if this option is used.
-icongeometry geometry
(.iconGeometry) Specifies the initial position for the icon.
-iconic
(.iconic) Causes the xdvi window to start in the iconic state. The default is to
start with the window open.
-install
(.install) If xdvi is running under a PseudoColor visual, then (by default) it will
check for TrueColor visuals with more bits per pixel, and switch to such a visual
if one exists. If no such visual exists, it will use the current visual and col-
ormap. If -install is selected, however, it will still use a TrueColor visual with
a greater depth, if one is available; otherwise, it will install its own colormap
on the current visual. If the current visual is not PseudoColor, then xdvi will
not switch the visual or colormap, regardless of its options. The default value of
the install resource is the special value, maybe. There is no +install option.
See also -noinstall, and the GREYSCALING AND COLORMAPS section.
-interpreter filename
(.interpreter) Use filename as the Ghostscript interpreter. By default it uses gs.
-keep (.keepPosition) Sets a flag to indicate that xdvi should not move to the home posi-
tion when moving to a new page. See also the `k' keystroke. This flag is honored
by all page switching actions and by up-or-previous() / down-or-next(), although
the latter only honor the horizontal position, not the vertical one. This allows
for a "continuous" scrolling back an forth through a document with a display window
narrower than a page width.
-l (.listFonts) List the names of all fonts used.
-license
Prints licensing information.
-linkcolor
(.linkColor) Color used for unvisited hyperlinks (`Blue2' by default). Hyperlinks
are unvisited before you click on them, or after the DVI file has been reloaded.
The value should be either a valid X color name (such as DarkGoldenrod4) or a hexa-
decimal color string (such as #8b6508). See also -visitedlinkcolor and -linkstyle.
-linkstyle
(.LinkStyle) Determines the style in which hyperlinks are displayed. Possible val-
ues and their meanings are:
0 No highlighting of links
1 Underline links with link color
2 No underlining, color text with link color
3 Underline and display text colored with
link color
The values for link color are specified by the options/resources -linkcolor and
-visitedlinkcolor (which see).
-margins dimen
(.Margin) Specifies the size of both the top margin and side margin. This deter-
mines the ``home'' position of the page within the window as follows. If the en-
tire page fits in the window, then the margin settings are ignored. If, even after
removing the margins from the left, right, top, and bottom, the page still cannot
fit in the window, then the page is put in the window such that the top and left
margins are hidden, and presumably the upper left-hand corner of the text on the
page will be in the upper left-hand corner of the window. Otherwise, the text is
centered in the window. The dimension should be a decimal number optionally fol-
lowed by any of the two-letter abbreviations for units accepted by TeX (pt, pc, in,
bp, cm, mm, dd, cc, or sp). By default, the unit will be cm (centimeters). See
also -sidemargin, -topmargin, and the keystroke `M.'
-mfmode mode-def
(.mfMode) Specifies a mode-def string, which can be used in searching for fonts
(see ENVIRONMENT, below). Generally, when changing the mode-def, it is also neces-
sary to change the font size to the appropriate value for that mode. This is done
by adding a colon and the value in dots per inch; for example, -mfmode ljfour:600.
This method overrides any value given by the pixelsPerInch resource or the -p com-
mand-line argument. The metafont mode is also passed to metafont during automatic
creation of fonts. By default, it is unspecified.
-mgs size
Same as -mgs1.
-mgs[n] size
(.magnifierSize[n]) Specifies the size of the window to be used for the ``magnify-
ing glass'' for Button n. The size may be given as an integer (indicating that the
magnifying glass is to be square), or it may be given in the form widthxheight.
See the MOUSE ACTIONS section. Defaults are 200x150, 400x250, 700x500, 1000x800,
and 1200x1200.
-mousemode [0|1|2]
(.mouseMode) Specifies the default mode of xdvi at startup: Magnifier (0), Text Se-
lection Mode (1) or Ruler Mode (2). See the section MODES, below, for more informa-
tion.
-nocolor
(.color) Turns off the use of color specials. This option can be toggled with the
`C' keystroke. (Note: -nocolor corresponds to color:off; +nocolor to color:on.)
-nofork
(.fork) With the -sourceposition and -unique options, the default behavior is for
xdvi to put itself into the background (like a daemon) if there is no appropriate
instance of xdvi already running. This argument makes it run in the foreground in-
stead. This is useful for debugging, or if your client application cannot deal
well with a program self-backgrounding itself in this way -- e.g. the IPC functions
in emacs are known to have problems with this. If no -sourceposition or -unique
argument is given, then this option has no effect. (Note: -nofork corresponds to
fork:off; +nofork to fork:on.)
-noghostscript
(.ghostscript) Inhibits the use of Ghostscript for displaying PostScript<tm> spe-
cials. (Note: -noghostscript corresponds to ghostscript:off; +noghostscript to
ghostscript:on.)
-nogrey
(.grey) Turns off the use of greyscale anti-aliasing when printing shrunken bit-
maps. (Note: -nogrey corresponds to grey:off; +nogrey to grey:on.) See also the
`G' keystroke.
-nogssafer
(.gsSafer) Normally, if Ghostscript is used to render PostScript specials, the
Ghostscript interpreter is run with the option -dSAFER. The -nogssafer option runs
Ghostscript without -dSAFER. The -dSAFER option in Ghostscript disables PostScript
operators such as deletefile, to prevent possibly malicious PostScript programs
from having any effect. If the -safer option is specified, then this option has no
effect; in that case Ghostscript is always run with -dSAFER. (Note: -nogssafer
corresponds to gsSafer:off; +nogssafer to gsSafer:on.)
-noinstall
(.install) Inhibit the default behavior of switching to a TrueColor visual if one
is available with more bits per pixel than the current visual. (Note: -noinstall
corresponds install:off; there is no +noinstall option.) See also -install, and
the GREYSCALING AND COLORMAPS section.
-nomakepk
(.makePk) Turns off automatic generation of font files that cannot be found by oth-
er means. (Note: -nomakepk corresponds to makePk:off; +nomakepk to makePK:on.)
-nomatchinverted
(.matchInverted) Don't highlight string search matches in inverted color; instead,
draw a rectangle in highlight color (see the -hl option) around the match. This op-
tion is activated automatically if the display isn't running in TrueColor. (Note:
-nomatchinverted corresponds to matchInverted:off; +nomatchinverted to matchInvert-
ed:on.)
-noomega
(.omega) This will disable the use of Omega extensions when interpreting DVI files.
By default, the additional opcodes 129 and 134 are recognized by xdvi as Omega ex-
tensions and interpreted as requests to set 2-byte characters. The only drawback is
that the virtual font array will require 65536 positions instead of the default 256
positions, i.e. the memory requirements of xdvi will be slightly larger. If you
find this unacceptable or encounter another problem with the Omega extensions, you
can switch this extension off by using -noomega (but please do send a bug report if
you find such problems - see the bug address in the AUTHORS section below).
(Note: -noomega corresponds to omega: off; +noomega to omega: on.)
-noscan
(.prescan) By default, xdvi does a preliminary scan of the dvi file to process any
papersize specials; this is especially important at startup since the paper size
may be needed to determine the window size. If PostScript<tm> is in use, then
prescanning is also necessary in order to properly process header files. In addi-
tion, prescanning is needed to correctly determine the background color of a page.
This option turns off such prescanning. (Prescanning will be automatically be
turned back on if xdvi detects any of the specials mentioned above.) (Note:
-noscan corresponds to prescan:off; +noscan to prescan:on.)
-notempfile
(.tempFile) As mentioned in the section DESCRIPTION above, xdvi will create a tem-
porary copy of the DVI file so that it can be accessed without interruptions even
while the file is being rewritten by TeX. Since this introduces the overhead of
copying the file every time it has changed, the -notempfile allows you to turn off
this behaviour. In this case, exposing parts of the window while the DVI file is
being written by TeX will erase the current window contents until the DVI file can
be completely reread.
(Note: -notempfile corresponds to tempFile:off; +notempfile to tempFile:on.)
-notype1fonts
(.type1) This will disable the use of the FreeType library to display Post-
Script<tm> Type 1 fonts. Use this option as a workaround when you encounter prob-
lems with the display of Type 1 fonts (but please don't forget to send a bug report
in this case, to the URL mentioned in the section AUTHORS below).
(Note: -notype1fonts corresponds to type1:off; +notype1fonts to type1:on.)
-noxi2scrolling
(.xi2Scrolling) This will disable the use of high-resolution scrolling using the
XInput 2.1 features of the X Server. When enabled, horizontal and vertical
scrolling is done in smaller increments than would correspond to a single click of
a mouse wheel. This is only available for hardware that supports the feature, gen-
erally touchpads. It is not available for traditional wheel mice. If suitable
hardware is not present or if the X server does not support XInput 2.1 or higher,
then the high-resolution scrolling feature is turned off and has no effect.
(Note: -noxi2scrolling corresponds to xi2Scrolling:off; +noxi2scrolling, to
xi2Scrolling:on.)
-offsets dimen
(.Offset) Specifies the size of both the horizontal and vertical offsets of the
output on the page. By decree of the Stanford TeX Project, the default TeX page
origin is always 1 inch over and down from the top-left page corner, even when non-
American paper sizes are used. Therefore, the default offsets are 1.0 inch. The
argument dimen should be a decimal number optionally followed by any of the two-
letter abbreviations for units accepted by TeX (pt, pc, in, bp, cm, mm, dd, cc, or
sp). By default, the unit will be cm (centimeters). See also -xoffset and -yoff-
set.
-p pixels
(.pixelsPerInch) Defines the size of the fonts to use, in pixels per inch. The de-
fault value is 600. This option is provided only for backwards compatibility; the
preferred way is to set both the resolution and the Metafont mode via the -mfmode
option (which see).
-paper papertype
(.paper) Specifies the size of the printed page. Note that in most cases it's best
to specify the paper size in the TeX input file via the line
\usepackage[dvips]{geometry}
which will be recognized by both dvips and xdvi; in that case the use of a `-paper'
option should be unnecessary.
The paper size may be specified in the form widthxheight optionally followed by a
unit, where width and height are decimal numbers giving the width and height of the
paper, respectively, and the unit is any of the two-letter abbreviations for units
accepted by TeX (pt, pc, in, bp, cm, mm, dd, cc, or sp). By default, the unit is
cm (centimeters).
There are also synonyms which may be used: us (8.5x11in), legal (8.5x14in),
foolscap (13.5x17in), as well as the ISO sizes a1-a7, b1-b7, c1-c7. Each of these
also has a landscape or `rotated' variant: usr (11x8.5in), a1r-a7r, etc. For com-
patibility with dvips, the formats letter (8.5x11in), ledger (17x11in) and tabloid
(11x17in) are also supported (these don't have rotated variants).
Any of the above sizes may be preceded by a plus sign (`+'); this causes the paper
size given here to override any paper size given in the dvi file. The default pa-
per size is 21 x 29.7 cm (A4 size).
-pause (.pause) This option provides a simple implementation of incremental (stepwise)
display, which can be used for presentations. When this option is used, xdvi will
pause the display of the current page whenever it encounters a special special-
string (xdvi:pause by default; the string can be customized via -pausespecial, see
below), and the cursor will change its shape. The action unpause-or-next() (by de-
fault bound to the Space key) will display the next portion of the page up to the
following special-string, or until the end of the page is reached. When the option
is not used, specials containing special-string will be ignored.
-pausespecial special-string
(.pauseSpecial) Sets the special string that causes xdvi to pause when the -pause
option is active. The default value of special-string is xdvi:pause.
-postscript flag
(.postscript) If flag = 0, rendering of PostScript<tm> specials is disabled; in-
stead, bounding boxes will be displayed (if available). A value of 1 (the default)
switches PostScript<tm> specials on. With a value of 2, the PostScript<tm> specials
are displayed along with their bounding boxes; this allows you to visually check
the correctness of the bounding boxes. The values can also be toggled at runtime
with the `v' keystroke and the corresponding numerical prefix arguments 0, 1 and 2.
-ps2pdfpath path
(.ps2pdfPath) Use path as a conversion program from PostScript to PDF. The program
or script should accept two command-line arguments: The PostScript file as first
argument, and the PDF output file as second argument.
-rulecolor color
(.ruleColor) Determines the color of the rules used for the magnifier (default:
foreground color).
-q (.noInitFile) Ignore the $HOME/.xdvirc startup file (i.e. don't read it at startup,
and don't write it at exit). This forces the defaults defined in $HOME/.Xdefaults
to be used. See FILES for more information on $HOME/.xdvirc.
-rv (.reverseVideo) Causes the page to be displayed with white characters on a black
background, instead of vice versa.
-S density
(.densityPercent) Same as -density (which see).
-s shrink
(.shrinkFactor) Defines the initial shrink factor. The default value is 8. If
shrink is given as 0, then the initial shrink factor is computed so that the page
fits within the window (as if the `s' keystroke were given without a number).
-safer (.safer) This option turns on all available security options; it is designed for
use when xdvi is called by a browser that obtains a dvi or TeX file from another
site. This option selects +nogssafer and +allowshell.
-sidemargin dimen
(.sideMargin) Specifies the side margin (see -margins).
-sourceposition line[:col][ ]filename
This option makes xdvi search in the dvi file for the place corresponding to the
indicated line (and, optionally, column) in the .tex source file, and highlight the
place found by drawing a rectangle in the highlight color (see the -hl option)
around the corresponding text. In addition, when run with this argument (and the
-nofork option is not given, which see), xdvi will always return immediately: if
it finds another instance of xdvi already showing dvi_file, then it will cause that
instance to raise its window and move to the given place in the dvi file; otherwise
it will start up its own instance in the background. If several instances of xdvi
are displaying the respective dvi file, the instance which was last raised to the
foreground will be used.
The space before filename is only needed if the filename starts with a digit. When
the space is used, the argument needs to be enclosed in quotes to prevent the shell
from misinterpreting the space as argument separator.
This option requires that dvi_file be prepared with source special information.
See the section on SOURCE SPECIALS for details on how to do this.
Here is a more detailed description of how the filename in the -sourceposition ar-
gument is matched with the filename in the source specials:
1. If neither of the filenames contains a path name component, the filenames are
compared ignoring the `.tex' extensions in both filenames.
2. Otherwise, if one of the filenames does contain a path component (e.g.:
./test.tex, ../test.tex, /my/homedir/tex/test.tex or any combination of these),
both filenames are expanded to a full path, with any occurrences of ../ and ./
expanded, and multiple slashes removed.
The pathname in the -sourceposition is expanded relative to the current working
directory of the xdvi -sourceposition invocation, and the pathnames in the
source specials are expanded relative to the path of the current DVI file being
viewed.
The path names are then compared ignoring the `.tex' extensions in both path
names.
-statusline
(.statusline) This option is obsolete; use -expertmode flag instead (which see).
-text-encoding encoding
(.textEncoding) Use encoding as the text encoding of the string in the "Find" win-
dow. Usually, this should not be needed since the encoding is determined from the
locale settings.
-thorough
(.thorough) Xdvi will usually try to ensure that overstrike characters (e.g.
\notin) are printed correctly. On monochrome displays, this is always possible
with one logical operation, either and or or. On color displays, however, this may
take two operations, one to set the appropriate bits and one to clear other bits.
If this is the case, then by default xdvi will instead use the copy operation,
which does not handle overstriking correctly. The -thorough option chooses the
slower but more correct choice. See also -copy.
-topmargin dimen
(.topMargin) Specifies the top and bottom margins (see -margins).
-unique
(.unique) This option will make another instance of xdvi running on the same dis-
play act as a `server'. For example, the invocation
xdvi -unique +5 file.dvi
will cause this other instance to load file.dvi on page 5 in place of the file that
it is currently displaying. If there is already another instance of xdvi already
displaying the file file.dvi, then it will just jump to page 5. If the other in-
stance of xdvi is displaying a different file, it will load file.dvi instead. Oth-
erwise, if no other instance of xdvi is currently running on the display, this op-
tion instead starts a new instance of xdvi in the background (unless the -nofork
option is specified, which see) displaying page 5 of file.dvi.
The filename and the +n option for the page number are the only options available
for controlling a remote instance of xdvi like this; all other options are current-
ly ignored.
-useTeXpages
Use logical TeX pages (the values of the \count0 register) instead of physical
pages for the pagelist labels and when jumping to a page in a document with the `g'
keystroke (or the goto-page() action). This option can be toggled via the `T' key-
stroke.
-version
Print information on the version of xdvi.
-visitedlinkcolor
(.visitedLinkColor) Color used for visited hyperlinks (`Purple4' by default). Hy-
perlinks become visited once you click on them. As for linkColor, the value should
be either a valid X color name or a hexadecimal color string.
-warnspecials
(.warnSpecials) Causes xdvi to print warnings about \special strings that it cannot
process to stderr. These warnings are suppressed by default.
-watchfile n
(.watchFile) If this option is set to a value larger than 0, xdvi will check the
DVI file for changes every n seconds. If the DVI file has been completely written
by TeX, it will be reloaded automatically. Fractional values (e.g. `2.5') are pos-
sible. The default for this option is 0, i.e. no watching.
Since xdvi cannot handle partial DVI files, it tries not to reload the file while
it is being rewritten. However, use of the magnifier or switching of pages re-
quires reading (a part of) the DVI file, and if the tempfile option is switched
off, this will erase the current contents of the window until the DVI file can be
read entirely.
-wheelunit pixels
(.wheelUnit) Sets the number of pixels that a motion of a wheel mouse will move the
image up, down, left, or right. (See the wheel and hwheel actions, below, for more
information on this.) If set to zero, the wheel mouse functionality is (essential-
ly) disabled. The default value is 80.
-xoffset dimen
(.xOffset) Specifies the size of the horizontal offset of the output on the page.
See -offsets.
-yoffset dimen
(.yOffset) Specifies the size of the vertical offset of the output on the page.
See -offsets.
KEYSTROKES
Xdvi recognizes the following keystrokes when typed in its window. Each may optionally be
preceded by a (positive or negative) number, a `prefix argument', whose interpretation
will depend on the particular keystroke. This prefix argument can be discarded by press-
ing the ``Escape'' key. If present, the ``Help'', ``Prior'' and ``Next'' keys are syn-
onyms for `?', `b', and `f' keys, respectively.
The key bindings listed here are those that xdvi assigns by default. The names appearing
in brackets at the beginning of the descriptions are the names of the actions associated
with the keys; these can be used to customize the key bindings, as explained in more de-
tail in the section CUSTOMIZATION below. If only a lowercase binding is listed, both up-
per- and lowercase keys will work for that binding.
ESC key
[discard-number()] The escape key discards the numerical prefix for all actions
(useful when you mistyped a number).
Return key
[forward-page()] Moves to the next page (or to the nth next page if a number is
given). Synonyms are `n', `f' and Line Feed.
Backspace key
[back-page()] Moves to the previous page (or back n pages). Synonyms are `p', `b'
and Ctrl-h.
Delete key
[up-or-previous()] Moves up two-thirds of a window-full, or to the top of the pre-
vious page if already at the top of the page. With a float argument, moves up the
corresponding fraction of a window-full.
Space key
[unpause-or-next()] Moves down two-thirds of a window-full, or to the next page if
already at the bottom of the page.
When the option -pause special-string is used and the display is currently paused,
this key will instead display the next portion of the page until the next special-
string or the end of the page is encountered. See the description of the -pause
option for details. The action [down-or-next()] does a similar thing, but without
pausing; it is not bound to a key by default.
Ctrl-Home (Xaw), Ctrl-osfBeginLine (Motif)
[goto-page(1)] Moves to the first page of the document.
Ctrl-End (Xaw), Ctrl-osfEndLine (Motif)
[goto-page()] Moves to the last page of the document.
Home (Xaw), osfBeginLine (Motif)
[home-or-top()] Move to the ``home'' position of the page, or to the top of the
page if the keep flag is set (in this case, the page doesn't scroll horizontally).
End (Xaw), osfEndLine (Motif)
[end-or-bottom()] Move to the ``end'' position of the page (the lower right-hand
corner), or to the bottom of the page if the keep flag is set (in this case, the
page doesn't scroll horizontally).
Down arrow
[down(0.015)] Scrolls page down.
Up arrow
[up(0.015)] Scrolls page up.
Right arrow
[right(0.015)] Scrolls page right.
Left arrow
[left(0.015)] Scrolls page left.
Alt-Ctrl-+
[change-density(25)] Increase the darkness of the fonts in the DVI window by adding
to the gamma value (see also the `S' keystroke).
Alt-Ctrl--
[change-density(-25)] Decrease the darkness of the fonts in the DVI window by sub-
tracting from the gamma value (see also the `S' keystroke).
Ctrl-+ [set-shrink-factor(+)] Increase the shrink factor (see also the `s' keystroke).
Ctrl-- [set-shrink-factor(-)] Decrease the shrink factor (see also the `s' keystroke).
Ctr-[ [pagehistory-delete-backward()] Delete the current item in the page history and
move to the history item before the deleted one. With a prefix argument n, delete n
previous history items. See PAGE HISTORY for details.
[ [pagehistory-back()] Move back in the page history (see PAGE HISTORY for details).
With a prefix argument n, move back n history items.
Ctr-] [pagehistory-delete-forward()] Delete the current item in the page history and move
to the history item after the deleted one. With a prefix argument n, delete n next
history items. See PAGE HISTORY for details.
] [pagehistory-forward()] Move forward in the page history (see PAGE HISTORY for de-
tails). With a prefix argument n, move forward n history items.
^ [home()] Move to the ``home'' position of the page. This is normally the upper
left-hand corner of the page, depending on the margins as described in the -margins
option, above.
? [help()] Same as the h key (which see).
B [htex-back()] This key jumps back to the previous hyperlink anchor. See the section
HYPERLINKS for more information on navigating the links.
b [back-page()] Moves to the previous page (or back n pages). Synonyms are `p',
Ctrl-h and Backspace.
C [set-color()] This key toggles the use of color specials. The key sequences `0C'
and `1C' turn interpretation of color specials off and on, respectively. See also
the -nocolor option.
c [center()] Moves the page so that the point currently beneath the mouse cursor is
moved to the middle of the window, and warps the mouse cursor to the same place.
D [toggle-grid-mode()] This key toggles the use of a grid on the displayed page. If
no number is given, the grid mode is switched on or off. By prepending a number
from 1 to 3, 3 different grid levels can be set. The units of the grid are inches
or centimeters, depending on whether the paper format is letter (in) or a4 (cm).
d [down()] Moves page down two thirds of a window-full. With a float argument to
``down'', moves down the corresponding fraction of a window-full.
Ctrl-f [find()] Pop up a window to search for a string in the DVI file. See the section
STRING SEARCH, below, for more details.
f [forward-page()] Moves to the next page (or to the nth next page if a number is
given). Synonyms are `n', Return, and Line Feed.
G [set-greyscaling()] This key toggles the use of greyscale anti-aliasing for dis-
playing shrunken bitmaps. In addition, the key sequences `0G' and `1G' clear and
set this flag, respectively. See also the -nogrey option.
If given a numeric argument that is not 0 or 1, greyscale anti-aliasing is turned
on, and the gamma resource is set to the value divided by 100. E.g. `150G' turns on
greyscale and sets gamma to 1.5.
Ctrl-g [find-next()] Find the next match string in the DVI file; this can be used instead
of pressing the `Find' button in the search window.
g [goto-page()] Moves to the page with the given number. If no page number is given,
xdvi jumps to the last page.
If the option/resource useTeXpages is active, the numbers correspond to the actual
page numbers in the TeX file; otherwise, absolute page numbers (starting from 1)
are used. In the latter case, the page numbers can be changed with the `P' key-
stroke, below. Note that with the useTeXpages option it is possible that the same
page number occurs multiple times; in such a case, xdvi will use the first page
number that matches.
h Pops up a help window with a short explanation of the most important key bindings
and concepts.
k [set-keep-flag()] Normally when xdvi switches pages, it moves to the home position
as well. The `k' keystroke toggles a `keep-position' flag which, when set, will
keep the same position when moving between pages. Also `0k' and `1k' clear and set
this flag, respectively. See also the -keep option.
Ctrl-l [fullscreen(toggle)] Toggles fullscreen mode (see the description of the
-fullscreen option for more information on this). This is even more flaky than us-
ing the command-line option: There is no universal standard how a window could
change its own geometry or window decorations at run-time, so this will not work
with most window managers or desktops. Generally, it's better to use the window
manager controls to change the size or decorations of the xdvi window.
l [left()] Moves page left two thirds of a window-full.
M [set-margins()] Sets the margins so that the point currently under the mouse cursor
defines the upper left-hand corner of the text in the page. Note that the command
does not move the image, but only determines the margins for the page switching
commands. For details on how the margins are used, see the -margins option.
m [toggle-mark()] Toggles the mark for the current page in the page list. When a page
is marked, it is displayed with a small star `*' next to the page number. The
marked pages can then be printed or saved to a file. A page or several pages can
also be marked by clicking or dragging Mouse-2 in the page list.
Ctrl-n [toggle-mark()forward-page()] Toggles the mark for the current page in the page
list, and moves to the next page. This lets you quickly mark a series of subsequent
pages.
n [forward-page()] Moves to the next page (or to the nth next page if a number is
given). Synonyms are `f', Return, and Line Feed.
Ctrl-o [select-dvi-file()] Read a new dvi file. A file-selection widget is popped up for
you to choose the DVI file from. If a prefix argument n is given, the n th file
from the file history is opened instead.
P [declare-page-number()] ``This is page number n.'' This can be used to make the
`g' keystroke refer to a different page number than the physical page. (If you
want to use `logical' or TeX page numbers instead of physical pages, consider using
the option -useTeXpages instead.) The argument n should be given as prefix to this
key.
Ctrl-p [print()] Opens a popup window for printing the DVI file, or parts of it. See the
section PRINT DIALOG for an explanation of the options available, and the resources
to customize the default behaviour.
p [back-page()] Moves to the previous page (or back n pages). Synonyms are `b',
Ctrl-h and Backspace.
q [quit()] Quits the program.
Ctrl-r [forward-page(0)] Redisplays the current page.
R [reread-dvi-file()] Forces the dvi file to be reread. This allows you to preview
many versions of the same file while running xdvi only once.
r [right()] Moves page right two thirds of a window-full.
Ctrl-s [save()] Opens a popup window for saving the DVI file, or parts of it. See the sec-
tion SAVE DIALOG below for more information on this.
S [set-density()] Sets the density factor to be used when shrinking bitmaps. This
should be a number between 0 and 100; higher numbers produce lighter characters.
If greyscaling mode is in effect, this changes the value of gamma instead. The new
value of gamma is the given number divided by 100; negative values are allowed.
s [set-shrink-factor()] Changes the shrink factor to the given number. If no number
is given, the smallest factor that makes the entire page fit in the window will be
used. (Margins are ignored in this computation.)
T [use-tex-pages()] Use logical TeX pages (the values of the \count0 register) in-
stead of physical pages for the pagelist labels and when jumping to a page in a
document via goto-page(). See also the -useTeXpages option.
t [switch-magnifier-units()] Switches the units used for the magnifier tick marks,
and for reporting the distance between the mouse pointer and the ruler centre in
ruler mode (see the section MODES). The default value is specified by the X re-
source tickUnits (`mm' by default). The units toggle through the following values;
except for `px', they all correspond to TeX's units: mm (millimeters) pt (TeX
points), in (inches), sp (scaled points, the unit used internally by TeX) bp (big
points or `PostScript points'), cc (cicero points), dd (didot points), pc (pica),
and px (screen pixels).
Ctrl-u [back-page()toggle-mark()] Moves to the previous page, and toggles the mark for
that page. This is the dual action to Ctrl-n.
u [up()] Moves page up two thirds of a window-full. With a float argument to ``up'',
moves up the corresponding fraction of a window-full.
Ctrl-v [show-source-specials()] Show bounding boxes for every source special on the cur-
rent page, and print the strings contained in these specials to stderr. With prefix
1, show every bounding box on the page. This is for debugging purposes mainly.
V [set-gs-alpha()] This key toggles the anti-aliasing of PostScript<tm> specials when
Ghostscript is used as renderer. In addition the key sequences `0V' and `1V' clear
and set this flag, respectively. See also the -gsalpha option.
v [set-ps()] This key toggles the rendering of PostScript<tm> specials between 3
states:
- specials (like EPS graphics) are displayed;
- specials are displayed along with their bounding box (if available);
- only the bounding box is displayed.
The states can also be selected directly by using `1v', `2v' and `0v' respectively.
See also the -postscript option.
Ctrl-x [source-what-special()] Display information about the source special next to the
mouse cursor in the statusline. This is the same special that would be found by
source-special(), but without invoking the editor. For debugging purposes.
x [set-expert-mode()] Toggles expert mode, in which the statusline, the scrollbars,
the menu buttons, the toolbar (Motif only) and the page list are not shown. Typing
`1x' toggles the display of the statusline at the bottom of the window. Typing `2x'
toggles the scrollbars (if available). For Xaw, `3x' toggles the menu buttons and
the page list, for Motif, it toggles the page list. In Motif, the additional bind-
ings `4x' toggle the toolbar, and `5x' the menu bar.
Without a prefix argument, all of the mentioned GUI elements are either switched on
(if they had been invisible before) or off.
Toggling the scrollbars may behave erratically with the Xaw widgets; e.g. the
scrollbars may reappear after resizing the window, and at certain window sizes one
of the scrollbars may fail to disappear.
See also the option -expertmode (the numbers above correspond to the bits in the
argument to -expertmode).
MOUSE ACTIONS IN THE MAIN WINDOW
The mouse actions can be customized by setting the X resource mouseTranslations. Since
there are three different mouse modes (see the section MODES below), there is a special
action mouse-modes which lists the actions for each of the three modes: mouse-modes("AC-
TIONS-FOR-MODE1", "ACTIONS-FOR-MODE2", "ACTIONS-FOR-MODE3"). If only one argument is
specified, this action is used for all modes. The default bindings are as follows:
xdvi.mouseTranslations: \
Shift<Btn1Down>:mouse-modes("drag(+)")\n\
Shift<Btn2Down>:mouse-modes("drag(|)")\n\
Shift<Btn3Down>:mouse-modes("drag(-)")\n\
Ctrl<Btn1Down>:mouse-modes("source-special()")\n\
<Btn1Down>: mouse-modes("do-href()magnifier(*2)", "text-selection()", "ruler()")\n\
<Btn2Down>: mouse-modes("do-href-newwindow()magnifier(*2)", "text-selection()", "ruler()")\n\
<Btn3Down>: mouse-modes("magnifier(*3)")\n\
<Btn4Down>: mouse-modes("wheel(-0.2)")\n\
<Btn5Down>: mouse-modes("wheel(0.2)")\n\
<Btn6Down>: mouse-modes("hwheel(-0.2)")\n\
<Btn7Down>: mouse-modes("hwheel(0.2)")\n\
All of these actions are described in more detail below. Note the use of quote symbols
around the action strings, which are necessary to group them into one argument. Buttons
4, 5, 6, and 7 refer to wheel movements (wheel up/down/left/right) on wheel mice. Not all
mice support horizontal scrolling.
The X Toolkit routines that implement translations do not support event types of Btn6Down
or Btn7Down. Because of this, xdvi implements its own parser for translations given in
mouseTranslations. This parser is more limited than the parser built in to the X Toolkit.
The string given in mouseTranslations should not begin with ``#replace'', ``#augment'', or
``#override''. Modifiers of the form @keysym are not supported, and the event type must
be of the form BtnDown or BtnnDown, where n is a positive integer without leading zeroes.
Also, some limitations apply to the action field.
do-href()
do-href-newwindow()
Usually, if a binding specifies more then one action, all actions are executed in a
sequence. The hyperlink bindings do-href() and do-href-newwindow() are special in
that they are used as an alternative to other actions that might follow them if the
mouse is currently located on a hyperlink. In this case, none of the other actions
will be executed; otherwise, only the other actions are executed.
The action do-href() jumps to the link target in the current xdvi window (eventual-
ly switching to another page), and do-href-newwindow() opens a new instance of xdvi
for the link target. In both cases, the location of the target is indicated by a
small arrow drawn in the same color as a visited link in the left corner of the
window.
magnifier(n x m)
magnifier(*n)
This action will pop up a ``magnifying glass'' which shows the unshrunk image of
the region around the mouse pointer. The magnifier disappears when the mouse but-
ton is released. Moving the mouse cursor while holding the button down will move
the magnifier.
Different mouse buttons produce different sized windows, as indicated by the argu-
ment of the magnifier() action. Its argument is either a string of the form widthx-
height, as in the -mgsn command-line option, or one of the strings *1 through *5,
referring to the value specified by the corresponding -mgsn option.
drag(+)
drag(|)
drag(-)
Drags the page with the mouse. This action should have one parameter, the character
``|'', ``-'', or ``+'', indicating vertical dragging only, horizontal dragging on-
ly, or dragging in all directions.
source-special()
This action starts a ``reverse search'', opening the editor at the location in the
TeX file corresponding to the pointer location in the DVI file. See the section on
SOURCE SPECIALS, below, for more information on this.
wheel()
This action can be used to scroll the image with a wheel mouse, where it is usually
bound to mouse button 4 (wheel up) or 5 (wheel down). The action takes one parame-
ter, giving the distance to scroll the image. If the parameter contains a decimal
point, the distance is given in wheel units; otherwise, pixels. A negative value
scrolls up, a positive value scrolls down.
hwheel()
This action can be used to scroll the image horizontally with a wheel mouse, where
it is usually bound to mouse button 6 (wheel left) or 7 (wheel right). The action
takes one parameter, giving the distance to scroll the image. If the parameter
contains a decimal point, the distance is given in wheel units; otherwise, pixels.
A negative value scrolls left, a positive value scrolls right. Not all mice sup-
port horizontal scrolling; this is mostly for touchpads, trackpads, etc.
text-selection()
This action allows you to mark a rectangular region of text in the DVI file. The
text is put into the X selection buffer and can be pasted into other applications
(e.g. text editors). This works similar to the Plain text option in the Save dia-
log; see the discussion there for more information on encoding issues.
ruler()
This action creates a cross-shaped ruler. Moving the mouse and holding the button
down drags the ruler and lets you measure distances on the page. See the section
Ruler Mode for more information on this.
UNBOUND ACTIONS
The following actions are not bound to a key by default, but are available for customiza-
tion.
quit-confirm()
Pops up a confirmation window to quit xdvi. To bind it to the `q' key instead of
the default `quit()' action, put the following into your ~/.Xdefaults file:
xdvi.mainTranslations: #override\
<Key>q: quit-confirm()\n
down-or-next()
Similar to unpause-or-next(): Moves down two-thirds of a window-full, or to the
next page if already at the bottom of the page.
shrink-to-dpi()
This action takes one (required) argument. It sets the shrink factor to an integer
so as to approximate the use of fonts with the corresponding number of dots per
inch. If xdvi is using fonts scaled for p dots per inch, and the argument to
shrink-to-dpi is n, then the corresponding shrink factor is the ratio p/n, rounded
to the nearest integer.
user-exec()
This action takes one (required) argument. Runs an external program specified by
the argument, which is tokenized on whitespace. The XDVI_FILE environment variable
is set to the absolute pathname of the DVI file, so that the program can find the
DVI. As an example, to establish the key `m' as a keybinding that regenerates the
DVI file with `make', put the following into your ~/.Xdefaults file:
xdvi.mainTranslations: #override\
<Key>m: user-exec(xdvi-remake)\n
where `xdvi-remake' names a program in your PATH analogous to `cd $(dirname $XD-
VI_FILE) && make $(basename $XDVI_FILE)'. (See also the section SIGNALS for a way
to get xdvi to reload the DVI file once it has been regenerated.)
CUSTOMIZATION
Key and mouse button assignments can be changed by setting the mainTranslations resource
to a string of translations as defined in the documentation for the X toolkit. The ac-
tions should take the form of action names listed in the KEYSTROKES and MOUSE ACTIONS sec-
tions.
An exception to this are the Motif keys osfPageUp (PgUp), osfPageDown (PgDown), osfBegin-
Line (Home) and osfEndLine (End) which are currently not customizable in the Motif ver-
sion.
Key actions will usually be without arguments; if they are passed an argument, it repre-
sents the optional number or `prefix argument' typed prior to the action.
Some key actions may take special arguments, as follows: The argument of goto-page may be
the letter `e', indicating the action of going to the end of the document. The argument
of set-shrink-factor may be the letter `a', indicating that the shrink factor should be
set to the smallest value such that the page will fit in the window, or one of the signs
`+' or `-', indicating that the shrink factor should be increased or decreased, respec-
tively. Finally, actions that would perform a toggle, such as set-keep-flag, may receive
an argument `t', indicating that the action should toggle regardless of the current prefix
argument.
Mouse actions should refer only to ButtonPress events (e.g. <Btn1Down>:magnifier(*1)).
The corresponding motion and release events will be handled internally. A key action may
be bound to a mouse event, but not vice versa.
Usually the string of translations should begin with ``#override'', indicating that the
default key and mouse button assignments should not be discarded.
When keys or mouse buttons involving modifiers (such as Ctrl or Shift) are customized to-
gether with their non-modified equivalents, the modified keys should come first, for exam-
ple:
xdvi.mainTranslations: #override \
Shift<Key>s: select-dvi-file()\n\
Ctrl<Key>s: save()\n\
<Key>s: find()\n
Because xdvi needs to capture pointer motion events, and because the X Toolkit transla-
tions mechanism cannot accommodate both motion events and double-click events at the same
time, it is not possible to specify double-click actions in xdvi customizations. For in-
formation on this and other aspects of translations, see the X Toolkit Intrinsics documen-
tation.
There is no command-line option to set the mainTranslations resource, since changing this
resource on the command line would be cumbersome. To set the resource for testing purpos-
es, use the -xrm command-line option provided by the X toolkit. For example, xdvi -xrm
'XDvi.mainTranslations: #override "z":quit()' ... or xdvi -xrm 'XDvi.mainTranslations:
#override <Key>z:quit()' ... will cause the key `z' to quit xdvi.
Some resources are provided to allow customization of the geometry of the Xaw command but-
tons. Again, they are not changeable via command-line options, other than via the -xrm
option. All of these resources take integer values.
buttonSideSpacing
The number of pixels to be placed on either side of the buttons. The default value
is 6.
buttonTopSpacing
The number of pixels between the top button and the top of the window. The default
value is 50.
buttonBetweenSpacing
The number of pixels between the buttons. The default value is 20.
buttonBetweenExtra
The number of pixels of additional space to be inserted if the buttonTranslations
resource string contains an extra newline character. The default value is 50.
buttonBorderWidth
The border width of the button windows. The default value is 1.
PAGE LIST
The scrollable page list on the right of the main window allows you to jump directly to a
page in the DVI file.
Mouse-1
Jumps to the page the mouse is located on.
Mouse-2
[toggle-mark()] Toggle the mark of the current page. The marks are used by the
`Print' and `Save to file' dialogs to select only marked pages from the DVI file.
When the mouse pointer is inside the page list, the mouse wheel switches to the next or
previous page.
SCROLLBARS
The scrollbars (if present) behave in the standard way: pushing Button 2 in a scrollbar
moves the top or left edge of the scrollbar to that point and optionally drags it; pushing
Button 1 moves the image up or right by an amount equal to the distance from the button
press to the upper left-hand corner of the window; pushing Button 3 moves the image down
or left by the same amount.
The scrollbars can be removed via the -expertmode flag/keystroke (which see).
MAGNIFIER
By default, the mouse buttons 1 to 5 will pop up a ``magnifying glass'' that shows an un-
shrunken image of the page (i.e. an image at the resolution determined by the option/X re-
source pixels or mfmode) at varying sizes. When the magnifier is moved, small ruler-like
tick marks are displayed at the edges of the magnifier (unless the X resource delayRulers
is set to false, in which case the tick marks will always be displayed). The unit of the
marks is determined by the X resource tickUnits (mm by default). This unit can be changed
at runtime via the action switch-magnifier-units(), by default bound to the keystroke `t'
(see the description of that key, and of switch-magnifier-units() for more details on the
units available).
The length of the tick marks can be changed via the X resource tickLength (4 by default).
A zero or negative value suppresses the tick marks.
PAGE HISTORY
Xdvi keeps a history of viewed pages, and you can move through the history and delete
items using the keys [ (pagehistory-back()), ] (pagehistory-forward()), Ctr-[ (pagehisto-
ry-delete-backward()) and Ctr-] (pagehistory-delete-forward()).
When one of the history commands is used, the page history is displayed in the status line
at the bottom of the window, with the current list item marked by square brackets `[', `]'
and a left and right context of at most 10 items. File boundaries are marked by `#'.
The size of the history can be customized with the X resource pageHistorySize (the default
size is 1000 items). If the size is set to 0, the history commands are disabled.
HYPERLINKS
The actions do-href() and do-href-newwindow() (by default bound to Mouse-1 and Mouse-2 if
the pointer is currently located on a hyperlink) can be used to open the link target in
the same window (do-href()) or in a new window (do-href-newwindow()).
If the link target is not a file on the local disk, xdvi tries to launch a web browser (as
specified by the -browser command line option, the BROWSER environment variable or the
wwwBrowser X resource, in this order) to retrieve the document. See the description of the
BROWSER environment variable, below, for an example setting.
If the file is a local file, xdvi tries to determine if it is a DVI file. If it is, xdvi
will try to display the file; otherwise it will try to determine the MIME type of the
file, and from that an application suitable for opening the file. This is done by parsing
the files specified by the environment variable EXTENSIONMAPS for a mapping of filename
extensions to MIME types, and the files determined by the environment variable MAILCAPS
for a mapping of MIME types to application programs. See the descriptions of these vari-
ables in the section ENVIRONMENT, below, for a more detailed description and the default
values of these variables. If no suitable files are found, a set of built-in default MIME
types and applications is used.
Xdvi currently uses no heuristics apart from the filename suffix to determine the mime
type of a file. If a filename has no suffix, the value of the resource noMimeSuffix is
used (by default application/x-unknown). If the suffix doesn't match any of the suffixes
in mime.types, the value of the resource unknownMimeSuffix is used (by default applica-
tion/x-unknown). If the mailcap entries do not list a viewer for a given mime type, xdvi
will show a warning popup. If you want to avoid this warning, and for example want to al-
ways use the netscape browser for unknown MIME types, you could add the following line to
your ~/.mailcap file:
application/xdvi-unknown; \
netscape -raise -remote 'openURL(%s,new-window)'
STRING SEARCH
The keystroke Ctrl-f or the menu entry File > Find ... (or the `Binoculars' symbol in the
toolbar, for Motif) opens a dialog window to search for a text string or a regular expres-
sion in the DVI file. The keystroke Ctrl-g jumps to the next match (like pressing the
`Find' button in the search window).
By default, the matches are highlighted in inverted color. If the display isn't running
in TrueColor, or if the X resource matchHighlightInverted is set to false or the command-
line option -nomatchinverted is used, xdvi will instead draw a rectangle in highlight col-
or (see the -hl option) around the match.
If a match crosses a page boundary, only the part on the first page is highlighted. Xdvi
will scan up to 2 adjacent pages to match strings crossing page boundaries; but note that
header or footer lines, or intervening float pages will be treated as parts of the scanned
text. Such text will usually cause multi-page matching to fail.
This emphasizes the fact that searching in the formatted text (the DVI output) works dif-
ferently from searching in the source text: Searching in the DVI file makes it easier to
skip formatting instructions, and makes it possible to search for e.g. hyphenation and
equation numbers; but sometimes the formatting results can also get in the way, e.g. in
the case of footnotes. In these cases it's better to search in the TeX source instead. The
use of source specials will make switching between the xdvi display and the editor with
the TeX source easier; see the section SOURCE SPECIALS below for more information on this.
The text extracted from the DVI file is in encoded in UTF-8 (you can view that text by
saving the file in UTF-8 format via the File > Save as ... menu item). If xdvi has been
compiled with locale, nl_langinfo() and iconv support, the search term is converted from
the character set specified by the current locale into UTF-8. (See the output of locale -a
for a list of locale settings available on your system). If nl_langinfo() is not avail-
able, but iconv is, you can specify the input encoding for iconv via the X resource tex-
tEncoding (see the output of iconv -l for a list of valid encodings). If iconv support is
not available, only the encodings ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 are supported (these names are
case-insensitive).
Ideographic characters from CJKV fonts are treated specially: All white space (spaces and
newlines) before and after such characters is ignored in the search string and in the DVI
file.
To match a newline character, use \n in the search string; to match the string \n, use
\\n.
If the checkbox Regular Expression is activated, the string is treated as a regular ex-
pression in extended POSIX syntax, with the following properties:
- a? matches a zero or one times.
- a* matches a zero or more times.
- a+ matches a one or more times. Note that * and + are greedy, i.e. they match the
longest possible substring.
- The pattern . matches any character except for newline. To also match a newline, use
`(.|\n)'.
- a{n} matches a exactly n times.
- a{n,m} matches a at least n and no more than m times.
- a|b matches a or b. Brackets can be used for grouping, e.g.: (a|b)|c.
- The string matched by the nth group can be referenced by \n, e.g. \1 refers to the
first match.
- The characters ^ and $ match the beginning and the end of a line, respectively.
- [abc] matches any of the letters a, b, c, and [a-z] matches all characters from a to
z.
- Each item in a regular expression can also be one of the following POSIX character
classes:
[[:alnum:]] [[:alpha:]] [[:blank:]] [[:cntrl:]] [[:digit:]]
[[:graph:]] [[:lower:]] [[:print:]] [[:space:]] [[:upper:]]
These can be negated by inserting a ^ symbol after the first bracket: [^[:alpha:]]
For more details on POSIX regular expressions, see e.g. the IEEE Std 1003.1 standard
definition available online from:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/basedefs/xbd_chap09.html
- As a non-standard extension, the following Perl-like abbreviations can be used instead
of the POSIX classes:
Symbol Meaning POSIX Class
\w an alphanumeric character [[:alnum:]]
\W a non-alphanumeric character [^[:alnum:]]
\d a digit character [[:digit:]]
\D a non-digit character [^[:digit:]]
\s a whitespace character [[:space:]]
\S a non-whitespace character [^[:space:]]
- The following characters are special symbols; they need to be escaped with \ in order
to match them literally: ( ) [ ] . * ? + ^ $ \.
- Matches of length zero are silently skipped.
The dialog also provides checkboxes to:
- search backwards;
- match in a case-sensitive manner (the default is to ignore case, i.e. a search string
Test will match both the strings test and TEST in the DVI file);
- ignore line breaks and hyphens: This removes all hyphens at the ends of lines and the
following newline characters, and replaces all remaining newline characters by white
spaces. So hyphenated words will appear as one word to the search, and a search for
two words with a space in between will also match the words if they are separated by a
linebreak.
Note that the hyphen removal may cause unwanted side effects for compound words con-
taining hyphens that are wrapped after the hyphen, and that replacing the newlines af-
fects the interpretation of regular expressions as follows: The . pattern will also
match newlines, and ^ and $ won't match begin and end of lines any more. (Since cur-
rently there is no option for turning off the greediness of * and +, turning on this
option will usually result in matches that are longer than desired.)
The current checkbox settings are saved in the ~/.xdvirc file.
PRINT DIALOG
The print dialog window allows you to print all pages, marked pages (click or drag Mouse-2
in the page list to mark them), or a range of pages. Note that the page numbers always re-
fer to physical pages, so if you're using the option `use TeX pages', you may want to dis-
able it to make it easier to determine the correct page numbers (or avoid this problem al-
together by marking the pages to be printed).
The value of the Printer text filed is passed to dvips via the -o! mechanism, as a single
argument after the `!'. Any arguments listed in the Dvips options field are segmented at
whitespace and passed as separate arguments to dvips. If you e.g. want to print the file
2-up, you should enter the following string into the Printer field:
psnup -2 -q | lpr -Plp
There are several resources for customizing the behaviour and the default entries of the
print dialog:
dvipsPrinterString
dvipsOptionsString
These can be used to provide default entries for the Printer and the Dvips options
text fields, respectively. If no paper size is specified in the DVI file (via e.g.
\usepackage[dvips]{geometry} - this is the preferred method), the input field is
initialized with the current value of the command line option/X resource paper.
E.g. the option -paper a4r is translated into the dvips options -t a4 -t landscape.
Note that no check is performed whether dvips actually understands these options
(it will ignore them if it can't); currently not all options used by xdvi are also
covered by dvips.
dvipsHangTime
dvipsFailHangTime
These specify the time (in milliseconds) that the printing progress window will
stay open after the dvips process has terminated. The value of dvipsHangTime is
used if the process terminates successfully; dvipsFailHangTime is used if it termi-
nates with an error. The default values are 1.5 and 5 seconds, respectively. If
both values are negative, the window will stay open until it is closed by the user.
SAVE DIALOG
This dialog allows you to save all or selected/marked pages in the current DVI file. You
can save in one of the following formats:
- PostScript (uses dvips to convert the DVI file to a PostScript file, just like when
printing to a PostScript file).
- PDF (first uses dvips to convert the DVI file to a PostScript file, then uses ps2pdf
to convert the PostScript file to PDF).
- Plain text in ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8 encoding. The latter will preserve more of the spe-
cial LaTeX characters e.g. from mathematical mode. Note however that e.g. only few of
LaTeX's mathematical symbols can be rendered correctly as text; so this functionality
works best for plain text documents. If a character cannot be displayed in the se-
lected charset, it is replaced by `\' followed by the hexadecimal character code. If
a character is not recognized at all, it is replaced by `?'.
The programs for PostScript and PDF conversion can be customized via the command line op-
tions or X resources -dvipspath/.dvipsPath and -ps2pdfpath/.ps2pdfPath, respectively; see
the explanation of these options above for more details.
MODES
The keystroke Ctrl-m [switch-mode()] switches between three different mouse bindings,
which can also be activated via the Modes menu (in Motif, this is a submenu of the Options
menu called Mouse Mode). The default mode at startup can be customized via the X resource
mouseMode or the command-line option -mousemode. The default startup mode is Magnifier
Mode.
Note: The modes are implemented by changing the magnifier() action. Switching the mode
will not work if Mouse-1 has been customized to an action sequence that does not contain
the magnifier() action.
Magnifier Mode
In this mode, the mouse buttons 1 to 5 pop up a ``magnifying glass'' that shows an
unshrunken image of the page (i.e. an image at the resolution determined by the op-
tion/X resource pixels or mfmode) at varying sizes. When the magnifier is moved,
small ruler-like tick marks are displayed at the edges of the magnifier (unless the
X resource delayRulers is set to false, in which case the tick marks are always
displayed). The unit of the marks is determined by the X resource tickUnits (mm by
default). This unit can be changed at runtime via the action switch-magnifier-
units(), by default bound to the keystroke `t' (see the description of that key,
and of switch-magnifier-units() for more details on the units available).
The length of the tick marks can be changed via the X resource tickLength (4 by de-
fault). A zero or negative value suppresses the tick marks.
Text Selection Mode
This mode allows you to select a rectangular region of text in the DVI file by
holding down Mouse-1 and moving the mouse. The text is put into the X primary se-
lection so that it can be pasted into other X applications with Mouse-2 as usual.
If xdvi has been compiled with locale, nl_langinfo() and iconv support, the select-
ed text is converted into the character set of the current locale (see the output
of locale -a for a list of locale settings available on your system). If nl_lang-
info() is not available, but iconv is, you can specify the input encoding for iconv
via the X resource textEncoding (see the output of iconv -l for a list of valid en-
codings). If iconv support is not available, only the encodings ISO-8859-1 and
UTF-8 are supported (these names are case-insensitive).
Note that UTF-8 is the only encoding that can render all characters (e.g. mathemat-
ical symbols) of a DVI file. If ISO-8859-1 is active, characters that cannot be
displayed are replaced by `\' followed by the hexadecimal character code. For oth-
er encodings, such characters may trigger iconv error messages. If a character is
not recognized at all, it is replaced by `?'.
To extract larger portions of text, you can alternatively save selected pages or
the entire file in text format via the File > Save as ... menu.
Ruler Mode
This mode provides a simple way of measuring distances on the page.
When this mode is activated, the mouse cursor changes into a thin cross, and a
larger, cross-shaped ruler is drawn in the highlight color at the mouse location.
The ruler doesn't have units attached to it; instead, the current distance between
the ruler and the mouse cursor is continuously printed to the statusline.
When activating Ruler Mode, the ruler is at first attached to the mouse and can be
moved around. It can then be positioned at a fixed place by clicking Mouse-1. Af-
ter that, the mouse cursor can be moved to measure the horizontal (dx), vertical
(dy) and direct (shortest) (dr) distance between the ruler center point and the
mouse.
Clicking Mouse-1 again will move the ruler to the current mouse position, and hold-
ing down Mouse-1 will drag the ruler around.
In Ruler Mode, the following special keybindings extend or replace the default
bindings:
o [ruler-snap-origin()] Snap the ruler back to the origin coordinate (0,0).
t [overrides switch-magnifier-units()] Toggle between various ruler units,
which can be specified by the X resource tickUnits (`mm' by default).
P [overrides declare-page-number()] Print the distances shown in the sta-
tusline to standard output.
TOOLBAR (Motif only)
The Motif toolbar can also be customized. The XPM file used for the toolbar icons can be
specified via the resource toolbarPixmapFile, which should contain a filename that can be
found in one of XFILESEARCHPATH or XDVIINPUTS (see the section FILE SEARCHING below for
more information on these variables). Xdvi will try to split this pixmap horizontally in-
to n pieces, where each piece is as wide as the pixmap is high and is treated as an image
for toolbar button n. This means that each icon should be a square, and that the entire
pixmap should have width n x h if h is the height of the pixmap.
The resource toolbarTranslations can be used to map icons/buttons to specific actions.
The resource should contain a string separated by newline characters, similar to the re-
sources mainTranslations and menuTranslations. Every line must contain either a spacer
definition, or an icon definition:
A spacer definition is a string SPACER(n), where n is the number of pixels inserted as
separator to the following button.
An icon definition is a colon-separated list containing the following elements:
- the index of an icon in the pixmap file (starting from zero);
- a long tooltip string, displayed in the status area;
- a short tooltip string, displayed as popup;
- a sequence of actions to be performed when the corresponding toolbar button is pushed.
To illustrate this, the default value of toolbarTranslations looks as follows:
xdvi.toolbarTranslations: \
SPACER(5)\n\
0:Open a new document (Key\\: Ctrl-f):\
Open file:select-dvi-file()\n\
SPACER(10)\n\
1:Reread this document (Key\\: R):\
Reread file:reread-dvi-file()\n\
SPACER(10)\n\
2:Go to the first page of this document (Key\\: 1g):\
Go to first page:goto-page(1)\n\
3:Go to the previous page of this document (Key\\: p):\
Go to previous page:back-page(1)\n\
4:Go to the next page of this document (Key\\: n):\
Go to next page:forward-page(1)\n\
5:Go to the last page of this document (Key\\: g):\
Go to last page:goto-page()\n\
SPACER(10)\n\
6:Enlarge the display (Key\\: Ctrl-+):Zoom in:\
set-shrink-factor(+)\n\
7:Shrink the display (Key\\: Ctrl--):Zoom out:\
set-shrink-factor(-)\n\
SPACER(10)\n\
8:Jump back to the previous hyperlink (Key\\: B):\
Back hyperlink:htex-back()\n\
SPACER(10)\n\
10:Print this document:Print:print()\n\
SPACER(10)\n\
11:Toggle marks for odd pages (Key\\: 1m):\
Toggle odd:toggle-mark(1)\n\
12:Toggle marks for even pages (Key\\: 2m):\
Toggle even:toggle-mark(2)\n\
13:Toggle mark for current page (Key\\: 2m):\
Toggle current:toggle-mark()\n\
14:Unmark all pages (Key\\: 0m):\
Unmark all:toggle-mark(0)\n\
SPACER(10)\n\
18:Display fonts darker (Key\\: Alt-Ctrl-+):\
Fonts darker:change-density(5)\n\
19:Display fonts lighter (Key\\: Alt-Ctrl--):\
Fonts lighter:change-density(-5)\n
When the mouse remains over a toolbar button for a certain period, a `tooltip' window is
shown, describing what the button does using the short tooltip string from the above re-
source. At the same time, the long tooltip string is displayed in the statusline. The ap-
pearance and behaviour of these tooltips can be customized via the following resources:
tipShell.background
Background color of the tooltip window.
tipShell.fontSet
Font used for the tooltip.
tipShell.waitPeriod
The time (in milliseconds) the mouse pointer needs to be over the button before the
tooltip is shown. Set it to a negative value to suppress the tooltips altogether.
GREYSCALING AND COLORMAPS
The greyscale anti-aliasing feature in xdvi will not work at its best if the display does
not have enough colors available. This can happen if other applications are using most of
the colormap (even if they are iconified). If this occurs, then xdvi will print an error
message and turn on the -copy option. This will result in overstrike characters appearing
wrong; it may also result in poor display quality if the number of available colors is
very small.
Typically this problem occurs on displays that allocate eight bits of video memory per
pixel. To see how many bits per pixel your display uses, type xwininfo in an xterm win-
dow, and then click the mouse on the root window when asked. The ``Depth:'' entry will
tell you how many bits are allocated per pixel.
Displays using at least 15 bits per pixel are typically TrueColor visuals, which do not
have this problem, since their colormap is permanently allocated and available to all ap-
plications. (The visual class is also displayed by xwininfo.) For more information on
visual classes see the documentation for the X Window System.
To alleviate this problem, therefore, one may (a) run with more bits per pixel (this may
require adding more video memory or replacing the video card), (b) shut down other appli-
cations that may be using much of the colormap and then restart xdvi, or (c) run xdvi with
the -install option.
One application which is often the cause of this problem is Netscape. In this case there
are two more alternatives to remedying the situation. One can run ``netscape -install''
to cause Netscape to install a private colormap. This can cause colors to change in
bizarre ways when the mouse is moved to a different window. Or, one can run ``netscape
-ncols 220'' to limit Netscape to a smaller number of colors. A smaller number will en-
sure that other applications have more colors available, but will degrade the color quali-
ty in the Netscape window.
HANDLING OF POSTSCRIPT FIGURES
Xdvi can display Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files included in the dvi file. Such files
are first searched for in the directory where the dvi file is, and then using normal
Kpathsea rules. There is an exception to this, however: if the file name begins with a
backtick (`), then the remaining characters in the file name give a shell command (often
zcat) which is executed; its standard output is then sent to be interpreted as PostScript.
Since the execution of arbitrary shell commands with the user's permissions is a huge se-
curity risk, evaluation of these backtick commands is disabled by default. It needs to be
activated via the -allowshell command-line option. NOTE: You should never use this option
when viewing documents that you didn't compile yourself. The backtick specials are not
needed for uncompressing gzipped PostScript files, since xdvi can do that on the fly if
the filename ends with .eps.gz or .eps.Z (and if the first bytes of the file indicate that
the file is indeed compressed). This is both safer and more flexible than the backtick
approach, since the default file searching rules will apply to such filenames too.
TYPE 1 FONTS
Using FreeType (version 2), xdvi can render PostScript<tm> Type 1 fonts directly, without
the route via TeX pixel (pk) fonts. The advantage of this is that only one size of each
font needs to be stored on disk. Unless the -notype1fonts option is used, xdvi will try
to render every font using FreeType. Only as a fallback will it invoke an external program
(like mktexpk, which in turn may invoke utilities like ps2pk or gsftopk) to generate a
pixel font from the Type 1 source. The direct rendering of the Computer Modern fonts
should work out-of-the box, whereas other Type 1 fonts such as the 35 `standard' Post-
Script<tm> fonts resident in printers may need to be made accessible for use with xdvi,
unless your system administrator or TeX distribution has already done so (which is the
case e.g. for current TeX Live systems). For the 35 PostScript<tm> resident fonts, xdvik
will search using the Fontmap provided with Ghostscript, if necessary. Also, the xdvik
distribution comes with a utility called t1mapper to make these fonts available for xdvi;
see the manual page for t1mapper(1) for usage details. This program is likely to be
dropped in the future, however, since it is probably not needed anymore.
SPECIALS (GENERALLY)
Any of the specials used by xdvi may be preceded by the characters ``xdvi:''. Doing so
does not change the behavior of the special under xdvi, but it tells other dvi drivers
(such as e.g. dvips) to ignore the special.
SOURCE SPECIALS
Some TeX implementations or macro packages provide the facility to automatically include
so-called `source specials' into a DVI file. These contain the line number, eventually a
column number, and the filename of the .tex source. This makes it possible to jump from a
.dvi file to the corresponding place in the .tex source and vice versa (also called `in-
verse search' - jumping from the DVI file to the TeX file is also known as `reverse
search', and jumping from the TeX file to the DVI file as `forward search').
To be usable with xdvi, source specials in the dvi file must have one of the following
formats:
src:line[ ]filename
src:line:col[ ]filename
src:line
src:line:col
src::col
If filename or line are omitted, the most recent values are used. The first source spe-
cial on each page must be in one of the first two forms, since defaults are not inherited
across pages.
You will need a TeX implementation that provides an appropriate switch (e.g. -src) or a
macro package (such as srcltx.sty or srctex.sty, available from CTAN:macros/latex/con-
trib/supported/srcltx/) to insert such source specials into the DVI file.
For reverse search, the combination Ctrl-Mouse 1 will make xdvi open an editor (the value
of the -editor command line option) with the file and the line number of the .tex source.
See the description of the -editor option for more information and example settings.
For forward search, xdvi has a -sourceposition option that makes xdvi jump to the page in
the DVI file corresponding to the given line (or the closest line having a source special)
of the specified file and highlight the found region. See the description of the -source-
position option for more details.
More information on setting up various editors for use with source specials can be found
at:
http://xdvi.sourceforge.net/inverse-search.html
PAPERSIZE SPECIALS
xdvi accepts specials to set the paper size for the document. These specials should be of
the form
papersize=[*]width,height
where width and height give the width and height of the paper, respectively. Each of
these should appear in the form of a decimal number followed by any of the two-letter ab-
breviations for units accepted by TeX (pt, pc, in, bp, cm, mm, dd, cc, or sp). If an as-
terisk (*) appears just before the width, then the measurements refer to the document di-
mensions (e.g. pt as opposed to truept). This allows a macro package to vary the page
size according to elements of the document; e.g.
\special{xdvi: papersize=*\number\wd\mybox sp,
\number\ht\mybox sp}
Except for the asterisk, this format is compatible with dvips.
The last papersize special on a page determines the size of that page. If there is no
such special on a given page, the most recent papersize is used, or, if there are no pa-
persize specials on any preceding page, then the value of the paper resource (or -paper
option on the command line) is used. Thus the paper size may vary for different pages of
the dvi file.
If the paper resource (or -paper command-line option) begins with a plus sign (`+'), then
all papersize specials in the dvi file are ignored.
COLOR SPECIALS
The color specials supported by xdvi are the same as those supported by dvips, except that
the literal PostScript color specification (as in the AggiePattern example in the dvips
documentation) is not supported. There are also some restrictions due to the way xdvi's
drawing routines are implemented; e.g. the \colorbox and \fcolorbox macros don't work
with xdvi. See the section LIMITATIONS below for more information on these restrictions.
Xdvi supports the same list of named colors as dvips does, namely:
Apricot, Aquamarine, Bittersweet, Black, Blue, BlueGreen, BlueViolet, BrickRed, Brown,
BurntOrange, CadetBlue, CarnationPink, Cerulean, CornflowerBlue, Cyan, Dandelion, DarkO-
rchid, Emerald, ForestGreen, Fuchsia, Goldenrod, Gray, Green, GreenYellow, JungleGreen,
Lavender, LimeGreen, Magenta, Mahogany, Maroon, Melon, MidnightBlue, Mulberry, NavyBlue,
OliveGreen, Orange, OrangeRed, Orchid, Peach, Periwinkle, PineGreen, Plum, ProcessBlue,
Purple, RawSienna, Red, RedOrange, RedViolet, Rhodamine, RoyalBlue, RoyalPurple, Ru-
bineRed, Salmon, SeaGreen, Sepia, SkyBlue, SpringGreen, Tan, TealBlue, Thistle, Turquoise,
Violet, VioletRed, White, WildStrawberry, Yellow, YellowGreen, YellowOrange.
Note that these names are case sensitive.
The documentation of the LaTeX color package provides more details on how to use such spe-
cials with LaTeX; see the dvips documentation for a detailed description of the syntax and
semantics of the color specials.
SIGNALS
When xdvi receives a SIGUSR1 signal, it rereads the dvi file.
ENVIRONMENT
Xdvik uses the same environment variables and algorithms for searching for font files as
TeX and friends. See the documentation for the Kpathsea library, kpathsea.dvi, for a de-
tailed description of these.
In addition, xdvik accepts the following variables:
DISPLAY
Specifies which graphics display terminal to use.
KPATHSEA_DEBUG
Trace Kpathsea lookups; set it to -1 (= all bits on) for complete tracing.
EXTENSIONMAPS
A list of files to be searched for mime types entries (as for Acrobat Reader).
Earlier entries in one of these files override later ones. If this variable is not
set, the following default path is used:
$HOME/.mime.types:/etc/mime.types:\
/usr/etc/mime.types:/usr/local/etc/mime.types
MAILCAPS
A list of files to be searched for mailcap entries, as defined by RFC 1343. See
this RFC or the mailcap(4) manual page for a detailed description of the mailcap
file format. Currently, only the following mailcap features are supported:
test=command
The entry is only used if command can be executed via the system() call and
if the system() call returns with value 0 (success). The command string may
contain the format string %s, which will be replaced by the file name.
needsterminal
If this flag is used, the command will be executed in a new xterm window by
prepending ``xterm -e '' to the command string.
All other fields in the mailcap entry are ignored by xdvi. Earlier entries in one
of these files override later ones. If the variable is not defined, the following
default path is used:
$HOME/.mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/usr/etc/mailcap:\
/usr/local/etc/mailcap
For security reasons, some special characters (i.e. ( ) ` \ ;) are escaped in the
argument before passing it to system().
BROWSER
Determines the web browser used to open external links (i.e. all URLs that don't
start with the `file:' scheme and are not relative links in the local DVI file),
and to open links for which no viewer has been specified in the mailcap files. The
value of this variable is a colon-separated list of commands. Xdvi will try each of
them in sequence until one succeeds (i.e. doesn't immediately return with status
0). This allows you to specify your favourite browser at the beginning, and fall-
back browsers at the end. Every occurrence of %s in the string is replaced by the
target URL; every occurrence of %% is replaced by a single %. If no %s is present,
the URL string is added as an extra argument.
An example setting is:
netscape -raise -remote 'openURL(%s,new-window)':xterm -e lynx %s:xterm -e wget
%s:lynx %s:wget %s
See
http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/
for more details on the BROWSER environment variable.
GS_LIB A colon-separated list of directories to search for Fontmap files, etc., as used
for Ghostscript. It has the same meaning as it does when running Ghostscript. In
xdvik, it is used when searching for font files when the map file does not give a
file name for the font (this should be quite rare). The command gs -h will list
the default value that Ghostscript uses. See also the XDVI_GS_LIB environment
variable (below).
XDVI_GS_LIB
This has the same effect as GS_LIB but affects only xdvi. Use this when you want
to use a different value for GS_LIB when running xdvi, but use either the compiled-
in default value or some other value when running Ghostscript. If both GS_LIB and
XDVI_GS_LIB are set, then xdvi uses XDVI_GS_LIB. To use the default value compiled
in to xdvi while still retaining the ability to set GS_LIB for use with Ghost-
script, you can set XDVI_GS_LIB to the empty string.
TMPDIR The directory to use for storing temporary files created when uncompressing Post-
Script files.
XEDITOR
Determines the editor command used for source special `reverse search', if neither
the -editor command-line option nor the .editor resource are specified. See the
description of the -editor command line option for details on the format.
VISUAL Determines an editor to be opened in an xterm window if neither of -editor, .edi-
tor, or XEDITOR is specified.
EDITOR Determines an editor to be opened in an xterm window if neither of -editor, .edi-
tor, XEDITOR or VISUAL is specified.
WWWBROWSER
Obsolete; use BROWSER instead.
LIMITATIONS
xdvi accepts many but not all types of PostScript specials accepted by dvips. For exam-
ple, it accepts most specials generated by epsf and psfig. It does not, however, support
bop-hook or eop-hook, nor does it allow PostScript commands to affect the rendering of
things that are not PostScript (for example, the ``NEAT'' and rotated ``A'' examples in
the dvips manual). These restrictions are due to the design of xdvi; in all likelihood
they will always remain.
LaTeX2e rotation specials are currently not supported.
MetaPost files containing included text are not supported.
Xdvi's color handling doesn't support the \colorbox and \fcolorbox macros; this is not
likely to change in the near future. This also means that e.g. colored tables (as created
by the colortbl package) may render incorrectly: Text in colors different from the default
foreground color may not be displayed. When the page is redrawn (e.g. after using the mag-
nifier), the background color of the cells may overdraw the text.
FILES
$HOME/.xdvirc
A file that holds all settings that the user changed via the keys, the `Options'
and the Xaw `Modes' menu and the dialogs, as X resources. These resources override
the settings in $HOME/.Xdefaults. This file is ignored if the -q option is used or
the noInitFile X resource is set.
config.xdvi
An optional configuration file for the Type 1 font setup, which specifies
dvips-style map files specific to xdvik. If used, it should be present in the di-
rectory determined by the TEXCONFIG environment variable. Its format is similar to
configuration files for dvips, except that it is only scanned for the names of map
files (p and p+ directives).
SEE ALSO
X(1), dvips(1), mktexpk(1), ps2pk(1), gsftopk(1), t1mapper(1), mailcap(4), the Kpathsea
documentation, https://ctan.org/pkg/xdvi/. and the Xdvik home page at http://xdvi.source-
forge.net/.
AUTHORS
Eric Cooper, CMU, did a version for direct output to a QVSS. Modified for X by Bob Schei-
fler, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Modified for X11 by Mark Eichin, MIT SIPB. Ad-
ditional enhancements by many others.
The current maintainer of the original xdvi is Paul Vojta, U.C. Berkeley.
Code for the xdvik variant has been contributed by many people, whose names are scattered
across the source files.
For the most up-to-date information, please visit:
http://xdvi.sourceforge.net
Please report all bugs to the SourceForge bug tracker:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=23164&atid=377580
Xdvik 22.87.04 2020-02-29 XDVI(1)
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