MiKTeX and proTeXt ⇒ Problem with DVI output

[vsb1357]

I've been using MiKTeX under Ubuntu for almost a year now and had no problem till today. I returned from a 2-week holidays and while trying to compile my most recent *.tex file, I noticed the DVI output is completely Gibberish. The formulas are OK but normal text is completely incomprehensible and it seems every letter is randomly substituted with another letter. Funny thing is that PDF file is OK and also my old files from 2 years ago are also OK, both in DVI and PDF. I uninstalled MiKTeX and installed it again, but to no avail. If anybody knows the solution for this awkward problem, be happy to hear it.

[frabjous]

The DVI is garbled, but the PDF is OK, from the same source? How are you creating the PDF? With a separate compilation via pdflatex, or is it created "through" the DVI (through dvips/ps2pdf or dvipdfmx or something like that?)

You probably have TeXlive installed too. Does it work if MiKTeX doesn't?

Does the log file show any errors or missing fonts or anything?

Is it possible the problem is only with your DVI viewer, or the fonts it uses? (Remember DVIs don't have the fonts embedded the way PDFs do.) What are you using the view the DVIs? Evince?

[vsb1357]

I'm using Miktex 1.9.9 and I just use the 'Latex' and 'pdfLatex' options from the toolbar to compile the same tex file and dvi (viewed with Document Viewer 2.30.3) seems incomprehensible but pdf file is OK. I used Ubuntu's Synaptic Packet manager to install Miktex so I do not know if I have Texlive too (but I guess most probably not).
I checked the log file and I noticed the following message:
LaTeX Font Info: Font shape `OT1/ptm/bx/n' in size <6> not available
(Font) Font shape `OT1/ptm/b/n' tried instead on input line 1095.

which is repeated for Italic and different font sizes. Maybe this font is missing, but I couldn't find out how to install it and still I cannot understand how is that possible that till dec 21, it could show the fonts properly and now it's unable to do it!
Thanks in advance for your reply.

[frabjous]

I'm using Miktex 1.9.9 and I just use the 'Latex' and 'pdfLatex' options from the toolbar to compile the same tex file and dvi (viewed with Document Viewer 2.30.3) seems incomprehensible but pdf file is OK. I used Ubuntu's Synaptic Packet manager to install Miktex so I do not know if I have Texlive too (but I guess most probably not).
I checked the log file and I noticed the following message:
LaTeX Font Info: Font shape `OT1/ptm/bx/n' in size <6> not available
(Font) Font shape `OT1/ptm/b/n' tried instead on input line 1095.

OK, I've very confused. MikTeX is a LaTeX distribution for Windows. To my knowledge (and my best efforts at searching packages.ubuntu.com) There are no MikTeX packages in Ubuntu's package repositories. The only part of MikTeX that has been ported to Linux is the "MikTeX tools", which provides nothing but an alternative to the pdftex binary which auto-installs packages on the fly. I assumed you were talking about that. I'm not very familiar with it, but as far as I know it cannot be used without another LaTeX distribution installed to provide the base LaTeX packages. Every Linux distribution I'm aware of has TeXlive in its package repositories instead. But neither TeXlive nor MikTeX have a current version number anywhere near 1.9.9, nor have they for years. Please check what software you're actually talking about. Running "latex -v" from a terminal should tell you what version of latex you're using.

And what toolbar are you talking about? MikTeX is not an editor and does not have toolbars. What editor are you actually using?

The warning messages you gave have to do with the Times font. Are you using a package that calls a Times font? See if things are better if you remove it.

But could you try with a new document and see if you have the same problem. Just create a minimal sample document. If you still have that problem, upload it, the resulting of compiling it, and your log file as attachments here.

"Document Viewer" and "evince" are the same thing. Try viewing the dvi with xdvi and see if it looks better there.

P.S. Do you perhaps mean "Texmaker" (an editor, the installation of which would pull in TeXlive as a dependency)? I think that might be close to version 1.9.9 in the Ubuntu repos?

P.P.S. OK, I tried some dvi's with the Times font in evince, and evince does seem to have trouble with dvi files that don't use the Computer Modern fonts. But the dvi's look fine in xdvi and also work fine to convert to ps or pdf and look fine even in evince when they do. If that's your issue, I wouldn't worry about it.

[vsb1357]

So sorry to confuse you. I actually use Texmaker, but since I was using windows for a long time, the Miktex name is stock in my head.
I use IEEETran document class. While I was trying to make a new test file, I understood that if I change the document class to 'article' and don't use any package, then dvi file is OK, but if I use 'times' package (as used by default in IEEE Transactions template) then again the dvi output is corrupt. But the bad thing is that when I use \documentclass[12pt,draft,onecolumn]{IEEEtran} then even when I do not use any packages, then the dvi output is still corrupt.
I have attached the sample tex file with dvi, pdf, log and also IEEETran package, in case you don't have it and want to compile the file.
Thanks again for the help.
P.S. I couldn't attach the IEEEtran files cause they were bigger then 256K, but here is a link: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/ ... /IEEEtran/

[frabjous]

Test1 tex and its outputs compiled with Texmaker under Ubuntu

Texmaker does not compile things. It is just an editor. It calls LaTeX and LaTeX compiles.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with that .dvi file. The problem is just your viewer. It appears to be a known issue with evince ("Document Viewer") (see also here).

Try viewing it with xdvi, or simply converting it to PDF or PS first, instead.

(Really, very few people use dvi as anything but an intermediate format these days, so this probably isn't high on the evince bug priority list.)

(By the way, there is some obsolete code in your sample. See l2tabu. That's not the cause of your problems, though.)

[vsb1357]

Thanks for your reply. I think I'd use the pdf file rather than using xdvi. Also thanks for the document on obsolete codes. Your help is much appreciated.

[localghost]

If the problem is solved with that, please be so kind and mark the topic (not the last post) accordingly as clearly written in the Board Rules (to be read before posting). Otherwise please tell us what is missing. Please keep that in mind for the future so that further reminders will not be necessary.


Thorsten