On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 16:38 -0400, Gregory Stark wrote: > > It's actually worse than that. > > I have a LaTeX document that specifies > > \documentclass[letterpaper]{article} > > This works fine in LaTeX, it generates a correctly sized DVI file which > generates a fine postscript file using dvips. However pdflatex overrides this > with the "default" and generates an incorrect A4 page with the first inch of > the page cut off. > > So your hard coded dimensions are actually overriding the document's specified > dimensions.
The problem is that (to first order) a DVI file knows nothing about paper sizes. So LaTeX itself does not inform pdfTeX/dvips about the paper size used. This is a problem for producing PDF files, since there the page size has to be explicitly set. Hence a default paper size is used, if the user does not specify the paper size by other means (geometry.sty, hyperref.sty and the KOMA Script classes do come to my mind). > I'm also confused as the earlier bug reports mentioned an > /etc/texmf/pdftex.cfg but there's no such file on my machine. pdfTeX no longer uses a run time configuration file. Things like the default paper size are now part of the format (eg pdflatex.fmt). From my point of view, this change makes it impossible to use /etc/papersize together with pdfTeX. > Is this configuration that the user is expected to do for each tex tool > documented anywhere? Where can I find a list of files I have to touch to > switch to letter paper? texconfig(-sys) paper letter or use a package like geometry that informs the pdfTeX/dvips about the paper size used. See also 'texdoc TETEXDOC'. cheerio ralf -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]