3.5 Configure dvips

Dvips is configured using the file config.ps. You will find it in ...\dvips\base (if you change this file, it may be a good idea to store it in a local texmf tree—see section 3.2—so that the changed file isn't replaced by the default config.ps if whenever you update the distribution. Don't forget to rerun mktexlsr if you do this).

You should perform the following setting in config.ps:

Set up the METAFONT mode and the resolution of the default printer:

 M mfmode
 D resolution
Just find these two lines in config.ps and set them to proper values.

Note: If you are using different printers you can simply create a file config.printer for each printer including the definition of METAFONT mode and resolution and call dvips by

 dvips -Pprinter
what tells dvips to use the configuration file config.printer.

Find the line

 o |lpr
and delete it. This setting is from teTEX, is Unix specific, and may not work. On the other hand, you can specify UNC names for your printer in the form of
 o \\server\printername

config.ps contains several definitions for paper sizes. For example, the definition for A4 reads as follows:

 @ A4 210mm 297mm
 @+ ! %%DocumentPaperSizes: A4
 @+ %%BeginPaperSize: A4
 @+ a4
 @+ %%EndPaperSize

Dvips uses the first defined papersize as default (after unpacking the distribution files this will be letter). If you want to use A4 as default you have to move the definition for A4 before the definition of letter. If you want to add other papersizes you can do this by following the scheme given above. Note: You can dvips to use another papersize as the default by

 dvips -tpapersize
(where papersize is the name of one of the papersizes defined in config.ps). You can also use
 dvips -tlandscape
to switch to landscape mode.

You can also control which fontmaps are used by dvips. If dvips converts a DVI file to PostScript, it has to decide wether a font is a PS Type 1 font or not. If yes, dvips has to translate the name of the font used by TeX to the PostScript name–and to include the outline of the font (normally a pfb file) unless the font is resident to the printer as for various Adobe standard fonts; if not, dvips has to include a pk file for the font (this is why you should define the correct METAFONT mode and resolution for your printer in config.ps). To decide, wether a font is a PS Type 1 font, it will use by default the fontmap psfonts.map. If a font is included in psfonts.map, dvips knows that the font is a PS Type 1 font, if not it will use a pk file for the font–and call mktexpk to generate one from the METAFONT source, if it doesn't exist.

You can configure dvips to use another fontmap foo.map instead of psfonts.map by including the line

 p foo.map
in config.map or to use foo.map additionally to config.ps by the line
 p +foo.map