General ⇒ colordvi package doesn't work with pdflatex

[leo simon]

Hi

I'm finding that the colordvi package doesn't work with pdflatex. Nobody else seems to have complained about this on the web, as far as I can tell. The code below displays in red when I use latex, but in black when I use pdflatex.

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}%
\usepackage{colordvi}
\begin{document}

\Red{should be red}

\end{document}

Could somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong? If I'm not doing anything wrong, what's the easiest way to get color in pdflatex?

Thanks very much for any help.

[cgnieder]

The colordvi package is quite old (last version from 1992) while pdftex was first released (please correct me if I'm wrong) in 2001. It doesn't surprise me that there is no pdftex support.

Why do you want to use it, anyway? There is the powerful xcolor package that works nicely with pdftex:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}%
\usepackage{xcolor}
\begin{document}

\textcolor{red}{\emph{is} red}

\end{document}

Regards

[leo simon]

Thanks for the response, Clemens. I have a pretty strong preference for colordvi because \Red{text} it's a bit less cumbersome than \textcolor{red}{text}, but more important, because colordvi gives me a whole range of colors pre-made, like \BrickRed, \BurntOrange, etc. I presume xcolor gives me a way to make my own colors, but it would be nice to have easy access to a wide range of colors.

[cgnieder]

I have a pretty strong preference for colordvi because \Red{text} it's a bit less cumbersome than \textcolor{red}{text}

Well, given that one should use semantic markup in a LaTeX document and such color declarations usually only are part of custom commands I don't think that this is much of a trouble. Anyway, it's easy to define:

Code: Select all

\newcommand*\Red[1]{\textcolor{red}{#1}}

colordvi gives me a whole range of colors pre-made, like \BrickRed, \BurntOrange

xcolor has those, too, via the dvipsnames option. Did you have a look at its manual xcolor?

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\begin{document}

\textcolor{BrickRed}{BrickRed}\par
\textcolor{BurntOrange}{BurntOrange}\par
\textcolor{OliveGreen}{OliveGreen}

\end{document}

You can even automate the defining of commands having the names of the colors:

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}

\usepackage{trimspaces}
\makeatletter
% the command \DefineColorCommands will take a comma-separated list of color names
% and will build commands from them using the corresponding color on their
% arguments:
\newcommand*\DefineColorCommands[1]{\@define@color@commands{#1}}

\def\@define@color@commands#1{%
  \@define@color@commands@aux#1,\relax\q@stop
}
\def\@define@color@commands@aux#1,#2\q@stop{%
  \@ifundefined{#1}{%
    \expandafter\edef\csname\trim@spaces{#1}\endcsname##1{%
      \noexpand\textcolor{\trim@spaces{#1}}{##1}%
    }%
    \ifx\relax#2\else
      \@define@color@commands@aux#2\q@stop
    \fi
  }{}%
}
\makeatother

\DefineColorCommands{
  BrickRed,
  BurntOrange,
  OliveGreen
}

\begin{document}

\BrickRed{BrickRed}\par
\BurntOrange{BurntOrange}\par
\OliveGreen{OliveGreen}

\end{document}

Regards

[leo simon]

This is wonderful thanks, I'm now a total convert to xcolor. Thanks very much in particular for the \DefineColor macro.