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Active-DVI FAQ
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<H1 ALIGN=CENTER><A name="FAQ">Active-DVI: Frequently asked questions</A></H1>

<H2 ALIGN=CENTER>Version 1.10.2</H2>

<P ALIGN=RIGHT><IMG SRC="advilogo.anim.gif"></P>

<DL>

<DT><STRONG>Is there a Win 32 version ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Unfortunately, there is no native Win 32 version.
However, you can also use Cygwin and build advi from sources after
proper configuration with the special configuration command
<CODE>configure_Cygwin</CODE>.</I>

 <DD>Additional answer: <I>you can also use the
<STRONG>DemoLinux</STRONG> CD-ROM that includes a version of
Active-DVI: if you can reboot the Windows machine, boot it from the
CD-ROM and launch advi. After the presentation, just reboot the
machine: DemoLinux does not write files on the hard disk, hence the
machine is left unmodified.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to get a full-screen presentation ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Just launch Active-DVI and type <CODE>^F</CODE>
(control-F) in the Active-DVI window.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to revert from full-screen to normal size ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Just type <CODE>^F</CODE> (control-F) again in the
Active-DVI window!</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to center the slide when full-screen mode is active ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Just use the mouse to move the bounding box of the
slide: pressing control key and the left button draws the bounding box, then
if you continue pressing the key and button you can drag the bounding
box where you want to.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to get online help for Active-DVI keys ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Just press <CODE>?</CODE> in the Active-DVI window.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to get examples of talks ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Look in the distribution, sub-directory
<CODE>examples</CODE>. The sub-directories are <CODE>basics</CODE>
(from simple to moderately advanced style effects), <CODE>slitex</CODE>
with simple and easy to use templates (four presentations),
<CODE>prosper</CODE> (two presentations in directories
<CODE>LL</CODE>, and <CODE>Join</CODE>), <CODE>seminar</CODE> (two
examples). You may also
consider the sub-directory <CODE>test</CODE> of the source main
directory and look at the various <CODE>*.tex</CODE> files. Just
type<CODE>make</CODE> in any of those sub-directories to build the
corresponding DVI presentations.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to ensure safety, since unknown applications can be launched
from the DVI file that I am previewing ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Active-DVI's default behavior is not to automatically
launch embedded applications: when a presentation attempts to launch an
application, the presentation is stopped and a dialog box appears to
tell you the name of the application and ask you for confirmation
before launching.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How do I know in advance the set of applications that a
DVI file can launch ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Just launch Active-DVI with the <CODE>-n</CODE> option.
<CODE>advi -n file.dvi</CODE> will analyze the file <CODE>file.dvi</CODE>
and print out the list of embedded commands it contains.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to print my slides for real on paper or slides for
a retro-projector ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Easy. Just use the <CODE>ignore</CODE> option of the
<CODE>advi.sty</CODE> package, it is especially devoted to that task!
Write <CODE>usepackage[ignore]{advi}</CODE> in the header of the document,
then use LaTeX to recompile your source file: the Active-DVI package
will suppress the effects that cannot be rendered and render the effects that
it knows how to emulate via postscript.</I>
 <DD>Additional answer: <I>Impossible. How could you ever believe that
somebody or something could render on a mere sheet of paper all those
text dancing movements and those fancy, fascinating, and creative
effects that your presentation features ? No hope: you really need
Active-DVI to play your talk!</I>
 <DD>Additional<SUP>2</SUP> (preventive) answer: <I>The additional
answer which immediately precedes this one is a joke; in fact, the
truth is: we worked hard such that the <CODE>ignore</CODE> option of
<CODE>advi.sty</CODE> does a good job; however, it is clear that the
Active-DVI style can just do its best to perform a task that
cannot be done perfectly.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How do I write on my slide during the presentation ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Just type <CODE>s</CODE> to write text and
<CODE>S</CODE> to draw lines.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to write on my slides some programs that have colored
parts ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>Just use the environment <CODE>alltt</CODE>; then colors
(and other text annotations and typographic indications) are available
within a type-writer font setting. For instance:</I>
<PRE>
\begin{alltt}
{\it{(* Remark that double semi-colon is mandatory here. *)}}
let x = 1\textcolor{red}{;;}
let r = \{foo = 1; bar = "toto"\};;
\textcolor[named]{Red}{let} z = r.foo;;
\end{alltt}
</PRE>

Renders (much better than the following :)
<PRE>
<I>(* Remark that double semi-colon is mandatory here. *)</I>
let x = 1<FONT COLOR=red>;;</FONT>
let r = {foo = 1; bar = "toto"};;
<FONT COLOR=red>let</FONT> z = r.foo;;
</PRE>

<DT><STRONG>How to write on my slides programs which have mathematical
formulas in them ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>If you need mathematical formulas into your programs,
use the environment <CODE>alltt</CODE> and insert the formulas into fancy
parens <CODE>\(</CODE> and <CODE>\)</CODE>.</I>

<DT><STRONG>Some part (or every) material on my slides is invisible
when using <CODE>advi</CODE> (whereas everything goes well with
<CODE>xdvi</CODE>). What happens ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>You should be using some virtual fonts and Active-DVI does not
natively handle those; you must preprocess the DVI file to expand
virtual fonts using the command
<A
HREF="http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/dviware/dvicopy/">dvicopy</A>.
For instance:
<PRE>
        dvicopy foo.dvi foo.advi &amp;&amp; advi foo.advi
</PRE>
usually works fine.
</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to visualize Adobe PostScript fonts like
<CODE>ptmr8t</CODE> using Active-DVI ?</STRONG>

 <DD>Answer: <I>You have to preprocess the file with the command
<A HREF="http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/dviware/dvicopy/">dvicopy</A>
which expands virtual fonts. For instance:
<PRE>
        dvicopy foo.dvi foo.advi &amp;&amp; advi foo.advi
</PRE>
usually works fine.
</I>

 <DD>Additional answer: <I>Active-DVI can display only PK based fonts
whose sources are provided in <CODE>.mf</CODE> files. Adobe fonts
having no <CODE>.mf</CODE> source files, hence METAFONT cannot create
the corresponding <CODE>.pk</CODE> files for Active-DVI.</I>
 <DD><I>The workaround is to use an equivalent of the problematic font
in the Computer-Modern font set, that has been designed by Donald Knuth
to be the default fonts for TeX.</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to solve the margin problems of Active-DVI (margins
are wrong with <CODE>advi</CODE> while <CODE>xdvi</CODE> works
perfect) ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I><CODE>xdvi</CODE> and <CODE>advi</CODE> do not use the
same margins. <CODE>Advi</CODE> uses the specification that TeX emits
into the DVI file (bounding box) and does not add extra space for
margins. Unfortunately, many LaTeX styles and packages do not give a
relevant value to the bounding box. 
 <DD>The workaround is to modify margins, either by moving the
bounding-box around with the mouse (Control+button), or to use the
relevant option on the command line when launching <CODE>advi</CODE>
(the <CODE>-vmargin</CODE> and <CODE>-hmargin</CODE> options).</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to display the target of an HTML anchor in an already
running browser ?</STRONG>
 <DD>Answer: <I>to render hyper links that are HTML pages, you must
properly set up the <CODE>-browser</CODE> option of <CODE>advi</CODE>,
or explicitly call the browser you want with the proper option in an
<CODE>adviembed</CODE> command. You could use for instance:</I>
<PRE>
netscape -remote 'openURL(http://www.acm.org)'
</PRE>

<I>To insert such a command into an <CODE>adviembed</CODE> command, a
little trickery is necessary, since <CODE>'</CODE> characters are
interpreted by LaTeX. To prevent this behavior, you can write for
instance:</I>
<PRE>
{\catcode `\' 12 \catcode `\: 12, \catcode `\' 12
  \adviembed {netscape -remote 'openURL(http://www.acm.org)'}
}
</PRE>
</DD>

<DD><I>For <CODE>mozilla</CODE>, you must also use the option
<CODE>mozilla -remote</CODE>. Similarly to the previous question, this
option supposes that a mozilla browser is already up and running. If
you want to have a command that works in any case, even if no mozilla
is launched, you could use a shell script like:</I>
<PRE>
#!/bin/bash

# Here you write the path corresponding to your mozilla binary command,
# for instance
#MOZILLA=/usr/local/mozilla/mozilla
MOZILLA=`which mozilla`

case $# in
 1) 
   if \$MOZILLA -remote "ping()" 2>/dev/null
   then 
     \$MOZILLA -remote "openURL($1,new-window)" || \
     \$MOZILLA "$@" 
   else
     \$MOZILLA "$@" 
   fi;;
 *)
   \$MOZILLA "$@";;
esac
</PRE>
<I>(Instead of the <CODE>new-window</CODE> behavior specification, you
can use <CODE>new-tab</CODE> or nothing, as you wish.)</I>

<DT><STRONG>How to avoid spurious messages from <CODE>advi</CODE>
related to <CODE>dvips</CODE> ?</STRONG>

<DD>I got for instance
<PRE>
dvips: Unknown keyword (proc) in \special will be ignored
dvips: Unknown keyword (koyaa) in \special will be ignored
dvips: Unknown keyword (record) in \special will be ignored
dvips: Unknown keyword (start) in \special will be ignored
dvips: Couldn't find figure file advi:; continuing
dvips: Unknown keyword (embed) in \special will be ignored
dvips: Unknown keyword (name) in \special will be ignored
dvips: Unknown keyword ("xmms") in \special will be ignored
</PRE>
 </DD>
 <DD>Answer: <I>As written in the messages, those errors are not
reported by <CODE>advi</CODE> by issued by <CODE>dvips</CODE> that
cannot understand the <CODE>\special</CODE> instructions that
the <CODE>advi.sty</CODE> LaTeX style inserts into the DVI file.
This behavior is normal and properly specified by the DVI format:
interpreters of DVI files are required to ignore the
<CODE>\special</CODE> instructions they do not understand. However,
nothing prevents interpreters from emitting a warning when facing an
unknown instruction.
</I>

</DL>

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<ADDRESS>Contact <A
 HREF="mailto:Pierre.Weis@inria.fr">Pierre.Weis@inria.fr</A></ADDRESS>

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