🚀 go-pugleaf

moss@cs.umass.edu writes:

>I have found that at least some versions of dvips do arbitrarily bad things
>with long lines in config.ps (I was trying to list all my font library files,
>which I made myself, and there are over ten of them, but I found that I could
>give the directory as an item and then use short names; this still broke with
>an older dvips, but the latest dvips386 swallos it fine).

'Some versions' means dvips 5.47 or earlier.
dvips 5.47 tries to load all font library files listed and leave them
open.  However most MSDOS C compilers limit the number of open files 
to 20, of which 5 are used for stdin, stdout, stderr, stdaux, stdprn, 
another three are used for input file, output file, and header file, 
which leaves a limit of 12 files for font libraries.

Later versions (including all Windows and 386 versions) keep only the 
4 most recently used font libraries open, for people who have enough 
disk space to leave more than 12 font libraries lying around.


IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT 

For people who are having problems with dvips,

      Read the section of dvips.tex titled 'Diagnosing Problems'
      and its subsection 'Debug Options'.

This describes the 'dvips -d-1' option which is invaluable for
finding why dvips can't find the right files.

-- 
Russell Lang   Email: rjl@fawlty4.eng.monash.edu.au   Phone: (03) 565 3460
Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering
Monash University, Australia