Re: [TCLUG:20364] slick way to read .dvi.gz

[Mike Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

Philip C Mendelsohn wrote:
> 
> I'm wondering if anyone has a slick answer to this:
> 
> I have lots of systems around here running Debian (usually slink /
> slink+).  I decided to set up teTeX to do some work at home -- No
> trouble.  The question is that I want to actually read some of the docs I
> usually take for granted.
> 
> The teTeX docs are usually a lot of .dvi.gz files, and they are tied
> together with a couple of web pages.
> 
> I'm having a hard time setting up lynx or netscape to gunzip them *and*
> send them to xdvi.
> 
> Can anyone suggest a method other than gunzipping everything once
> installed?  Any suggestions on a better .dvi previewer?  Am I forgetting
> something stupid about named pipes, or why I can't use them in the MIME
> types editor in Netscape?

I wouldn't really recommend using named pipes, as many programs these
days will only read from `regular' files.  However, you can just create
a regular file to dump a dvi file into, then run xdvi on it.  A simple
example of this would be something like (the `$$' is a variable
representing the process ID of the script):

#!/bin/sh
gunzip -c $1 > /tmp/tmp.$$
xdvi /tmp/tmp.$$
rm -f /tmp/tmp.$$

HTH

-- 
 _  _  _  _ _  ___    _ _  _  ___ _ _  __   If it jams, force it.  If 
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[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088@tc.umn.edu ]