Man1 - dvispc.1

dvispc - Modify a DVI file to be page-independent in specials

dvispc [*-c*] [*-bvz*] input_dvi_file [/output_dvi_file/]

dvispc -d input_dvi_file

dvispc -s [*-p..*] input_dvi_file [/output_text_file/]

dvispc -a [*-ltv*] [*-J..*] [*-p..*] [*-r..*] input_dvi_file [/output_text_file/]

dvispc -x[..] [*-ltv*] [*-r..*] [/input_text_file/] output_dvi_file

Dvispc is a utility to modify/edit TeX DVI file with the following features:

Mode option -c (default): correct an input DVI to be page-independent in specials (default)

Mode option -d: dry run to check if an input DVI is page-independent in specials

Mode option -s: show all specials in the input DVI

Mode option -a: translate DVI into a Text (like dv2dt in dtl)

Mode option -x: translate Text into a DVI (like dt2dv in dtl)

(1) The main feature of dvispc is the first one, to make a page-independent DVI file.

A “pure” DVI file must be actually page-independent. However in recent years, DVI files with lots of \special’s (color, annotation etc.) are commonly used, and they are not always page-independent. In such case, for example, dviselect or dvidvi fails to preserve \special’s (e.g. page color might be lost).

The program dvispc corrects such page-“dependent” DVI files to be page-independent, which can be safely processed by dviselect or dvidvi and then properly converted to other formats such as PostScript and PDF.

(2) To know whether such a correction is needed or not, dvispc -d will suffice.

(3) The mode -s lists all specials found in the input DVI as-is, with a preceding number which denotes the page where it appears. For example,

[1]
{color push Black}
{color pop}
{color push rgb 1 0 0}
{color pop}
[2]
{color push Black}
{color pop}

This feature is equivalent to a program dvispecials in TeX-Guy package http://www-masu.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/%7Ekakugawa/TeX-Guy/ and dvii -s https://ctan.org/pkg/dvii.

(4) The mode -a and -x correspond to dv2dt and dt2dv in the dtl (= DVI Text Language) package respectively. By default dvispc -a formats the output text in its own style, but DTL-compatible format is available with -t option. Also, dvispc -x can accept DTL-compatible text input.

Currently dvispc supports the followings:

dvips-compatible specials color push, color pop, background dvipdfm(x) specials bcolor, ecolor, bgcolor, bann, eann tpic specials: pn

Other specials might be supported in the future if needed.

dviselect(1), dvidvi(1), dvips(1), dvipdfmx(1)

The program dvispc is derived from the DVIOUT package (DVI previewer for Windows) by Toshio OSHIMA (“SHIMA”), Yoshiki OTOBE, and Kazunori ASAYAMA. Current version is maintained by Japanese TeX Development Community https://texjp.org.
For more information, please refer to dvispc-en.txt (in English) and dvispc-ja.txt (in Japanese) on our GitHub repository, https://github.com/texjporg/tex-jp-build (under source/texk/dviout-util directory).