CATDVI(1)                                               CATDVI(1)



NAME
       catdvi - a DVI to plain text converter

SYNOPSIS
       catdvi   [-d debuglevel,  --debug=debuglevel]  [-e outenc,
       --output-encoding=outenc] [-p pagespec, --first-page=page-
       spec]  [-l pagespec,  --last-page=pagespec]  [-N,  --list-
       page-numbers]  [-s,  --sequential]  [-U,   --show-unknown-
       glyphs] [-h, --help] [--version] [--copyright] [dvi-file]

DESCRIPTION
       This manual page documents catdvi version 0.14

       catdvi  reads the DVI (typesetter DeVice Independent) file
       dvi-file and dumps a plain text approximation of the docu-
       ment  it describes to stdout.  If the argument dvi-file is
       omitted or a dash (`-'),  catdvi  will  read  from  stdin.
       Several  output encodings (different character sets of the
       plain text output) are supported, most notably UTF-8.

       The current version of catdvi is a work  in  progress;  it
       may  not  be robust enough for production use, but already
       works fine with linear english  text.   Many  mathematical
       symbols  (e.g. the uppercase greek letters) and moderately
       complex formulae also come out right.

       The program needs to read the TFM (Tex Font Metric)  files
       corresponding  to  the  fonts used in the DVI file.  These
       are searched (and, if necessary and possible,  created  on
       the fly) through the Kpathsea library.

       In  order  to  correctly translate a DVI file to text, the
       input encoding of the fonts used in it  (i.e.  a  meaning-
       preserving  mapping from font code points to Unicode) must
       be known. There are a lot of different font  encodings  in
       use.  At  the time of writing, catdvi understands the fol-
       lowing input encodings:

       `TEX TEXT'
              Knuth's original font encoding, also known as  OT1.

       `TEX TEXT WITHOUT F-LIGATURES'
              A variant of the above.

       `EXTENDED TEX FONT ENCODING - LATIN'
              The Cork encoding, also known as T1.

       `TEX MATH ITALIC'
              The  encoding  of  Knuth's  math italic fonts, also
              known as OML.

       `TEX MATH SYMBOLS'
              The encoding of Knuth's  math  symbol  fonts,  also
              known as OMS.

       `TEX MATH EXTENSION' (most of it)
              The  encoding  of Knuth's math extension fonts (big
              operators, brackets, etc.), also known as OMX.

       `TEX TYPEWRITER TEXT'
              The encoding of Knuth's typewriter type fonts.

       `LATEX SYMBOLS'
              The encoding of the lasy fonts.

       Henrik  Theilings  European  currency  symbol  (`eurosym')
       font.

       `TEX TEXT COMPANION SYMBOLS 1---TS1' (almost everything)
              The encoding of the text companion fonts.

       Martin Vogels symbol (`MarVoSym') font.
              Both the 1998 and the 2000 version are supported as
              far  as  possible  -- about half of the symbols are
              not representable in Unicode.

       `BLACKBOARD'
              The encoding of the blackboard  bold  math  (`bbm')
              fonts.

       All AMS fonts except the Cyrillic ones.
              This  includes  the  AMS  math  symbols group A and
              group B, Euler fraktur, Euler cursive, Euler script
              and Euler compatible extension fonts.

       It  is impossible to do perfect translation from unmarked-
       up DVI to plain text, since the former does only  describe
       the layout of a page, and a translator such as this should
       really know where  words  and  paragraphs  end,  and  more
       importantly, which glyphs should be aligned vertically and
       which shouldn't.  The current alignment algorithm tries to
       preserve  the relative horizontal positions of word begin-
       nings; this works well in most  cases.   Word  breaks  are
       detected  using  simple  heuristics;  paragraphs  are  not
       detected at all (and no paragraph fill is attempted).

       The price of alignment is that the output will  likely  be
       more  than  80 columns wide, even though catdvi tries very
       hard not to use  more  columns  than  strictly  necessary.
       Output  is  usually  less  than 120 columns, almost always
       less than 132 columns wide. It  may  be  a  good  idea  to
       switch your terminal to one of these modes if possible.


OPTIONS
       The  program  follows  the  usual GNU command line syntax,
       with long options starting with two dashes.

       -d debuglevel, --debug=debuglevel
              Set the debug output level to  debuglevel  (default
              is  10).  Large values will result in lots of debug
              output, 0 in none at all.  The maximal debug output
              level currently used is 150.

       -e outenc, --output-encoding=outenc
              Specify  the  encoding of the output character set.
              outenc can be one of the numbers or names from  the
              table below.  Names are case insensitive.  The fol-
              lowing output encodings should be available:

              0: UTF-8
              1: US-ASCII
              2: ISO-8859-1
              3: ISO-8859-15

              The command catdvi --help (see below) will  give  a
              more  up-to-date  list  of  all  compiled-in output
              encodings. The default encoding is 1.

       -p pagespec, --first-page=pagespec
              Do not output pages before  page  pagespec.   Pages
              can be specified in three different ways; the first
              two are exactly the same as for dvips(1).

              A (possibly negative) number num  specifies  a  TeX
              page  number,  which  is  stored  as  the so-called
              count0 value in the DVI file for every page.  Plain
              TeX  uses  negative page numbers for roman-numbered
              frontmatter (title page, preface, TOC, etc.) so the
              count0 values compare as
                     -1 < -2 < -3 < ... < 1 < 2 < 3 < ...
              There  may  be  several  pages with the same count0
              value in a single DVI file. This usually happens in
              documents with a per-chapter page numbering scheme.

              A number prefixed by an equals sign (`=num') speci-
              fies  a physical page, i.e. the num-th page appear-
              ing in the DVI file. Numbering starts with 1.  Note
              that  with the long form of the option you actually
              need two equals signs, one  as  part  of  the  long
              option  and  one as part of the page specification.
              Example:
                     catdvi --first-page==5 foo.dvi

              The third form of a page specification, two numbers
              separated  by  a colon (`num1:num2'), is useful for
              documents  with  separately-numbered  parts,   e.g.
              chapters.   It refers to the page with count0 value
              equal to num2 that catdvi believes to  be  in  part
              num1.   Since  those part numbers are not stored in
              the DVI file, the program has  to  guess  them:  an
              internal  chapter counter is increased by one every
              time the count0 value of the current  page  is  not
              greater (in above ordering) than that of the previ-
              ous page.  The counter is initialized to 1  if  the
              first  page has negative count0 value and to 0 oth-
              erwise. (A document with separately numbered  parts
              will  probably have separately numbered frontmatter
              as well, and then  this  rule  keeps  the  internal
              counter equal to real world part numbers.)

       -l pagespec, --last-page=pagespec
              Do not output pages after page pagespec.  Pages are
              specified exactly as for  the  --first-page  option
              above.

       -N, --list-page-numbers
              Instead  of  the  contents  of  pages, output their
              physical page count, count0 value and chapter count
              (see the --first-page option above for a definition
              of these).

       -s, --sequential
              Do not attempt to reproduce the page layout; output
              glyphs  in  the  order they appear in the DVI file.
              This may be useful with e.g. multi-column page lay-
              outs.

       -U, --show-unknown-glyphs
              Show  the  Unicode number of unknown glyphs instead
              of `?'.

       -h, --help
              Show usage information  and  a  list  of  available
              output encodings, then exit.

       --version
              Show version information and exit.

       --copyright
              Show copyright information and exit.

ENVIRONMENT
       The  usual  environment variables TFMFONTS, TEXFONTS, etc.
       for Kpathsea font search and creation apply.  Refer to the
       Kpathsea documentation for details.

SEE ALSO
       xdvi(1),  dvips(1), tex(1), mktextfm(1), the Kpathsea tex-
       info documentation, utf-8(7).

BUGS
       These things do not work (yet):

       o      No rules are converted.

       o      Extensible recipes (very  large  brackets,  braces,
              etc.  built  out of several smaller pieces) are not
              properly handled.

       o      Complicated math formulae are sometimes  misaligned
              (mostly  due  to  lack  of  appropriate  word break
              heuristics).

       o      Some fonts and font encodings  are  not  recognised
              yet.

       o      Most mathematical symbols have no representation in
              the available output character sets except Unicode,
              and hence show up as `?' unless UTF-8 output encod-
              ing is selected. A textual transcription  would  be
              desirable.

       Watch out for these:

       o      If  there is a space where it does not belong or if
              there is no space where there should be one, report
              this  as  a  bug  (send  the DVI file to the catdvi
              maintainer, stating where in the file  the  bug  is
              seen).

AUTHORS
       catdvi    was    written    by    Antti-Juhani   Kaijanaho
       <gaia@iki.fi>,   based   on   a   skeletal   version    by
       J.H.M. Dassen  (Ray).   Bjoern  Brill  <brill@fs.math.uni-
       frankfurt.de> did further improvements and currently main-
       tains the program.

       The  manual page was compiled by Bjoern Brill, using mate-
       rial written by the first two program authors.



                         8 November 2002                CATDVI(1)
