DVI Viewer for Microsoft Windows

[13 September 2000: Please MAKE SURE that you are NOT trying to use WinZip with the following instructions. You MUST download and use PKUNZIP as described below.]

[1 June 2000: I have tried the package on Windows 2000, and it seems to work AOK. Thanks to Peter Kimberley for help.]

[1 June 2000: If you are having trouble with high-resolution printers, getting the message "I don't know the metafont mode for this device. Please add this information to the file genpk.bat", then contact me to obtain an updated genpk.bat file and information on how to install it properly.]

[27 April 1999: I have a (fairly poor) collection of .mf files here. If you need others, you will have to find them on the Internet. Ask the author of the document you are trying to view.]

To help you install a DVI viewer in the simplest possible way, I have put together a package of files containing H. Sendoukas's excellent DVI Viewer for Microsoft Windows, as well as the SB version of the Metafont program that generates the fonts that the DVI Viewer requires. There is also a setup program included that does almost all the installation work for you.

The package can be installed and run on any computer running Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or Windows 98. A minimum of 4 MB of RAM is required (8 MB for Windows 95/98); and it is preferable if you have at least 8 MB (12 MB for Windows 95/98).

Notes: This package only works if you let it install itself in the directories it wants to go into. This package does not work if your Windows directory is not on the C drive. This package does not work on Windows NT. You must ensure that there is a healthy amount of "conventional" memory available under DOS (say, 570 kB or more). You should erase all files from previous versions of DVIWIN or METAFONT that you may have downloaded from the internet. You MUST follow the following instructions religiously. (These are the most common reasons reported to me for this package failing to install properly!)

Note also that if you want to view documents using fonts that are not standard to TeX or LaTeX, you may have to find the appropriate .mf files on the internet and put them in the directory c:\dvifonts\mfinputs.

It was primarily to keep the size of the file to be downloaded to a minimum (it is only 677 kB for the entire package!) that I bundled the Metafont program with the DVI Viewer itself. This means that you do not waste time and money downloading over the Web every single bitmapped font for every possible document, at every possible screen and printer resolution! But the flip side of the coin is that, the first time the DVI Viewer requires a particular font, it must build it. The first time you ever run the DVI viewer, the whole font-building process typically takes no more than 10 minutes on a slow 486, or a few minutes on a Pentium. (This is much less time than it would take to download megabytes of fonts via the Web!) After using the viewer for a short time, all of the required fonts will have been generated, and do not ever have to be generated again.

If you have gotten this far, you must want to download the package! Let me describe the steps for you in detail:

If you are running Windows right now, you need to open a "DOS box", normally labelled "MS-DOS prompt":
- In Windows 3.1, go to the Program Manager and double-click the "MS-DOS prompt" icon. (It is normally in the Main group.)
- In Windows 95/98, go to the Start menu, click Programs, and you should see "MS-DOS Prompt" near the bottom of the list; click on it.
You can switch back and forwards between your web browser and the DOS box by using Ctrl-Esc or Alt-Tab, as usual.
If you are installing the program from DOS, you just need to get back to the C:\> prompt.
Create a temporary directory in which to store the file that you will download from here, as well as a few setup files. For example, you could type
```
   c:
   cd \
   md \instdvi
   cd \instdvi
```
to create a directory c:\instdvi and move into that directory.
If you don't have a copy of the PKUnzip program (version 2.04g), click here to download it right now (28 kB). (Switch focus to your web browser by using Ctrl-Esc or Alt-Tab.) When your web browser brings up the "Save As..." box, change directory to the temporary directory you created above (c:\instdvi in our example) and save it there.
Now click here to download the viewer package itself. It is quite a large file (679 kB), although it could have been worse. When your web browser asks you what to do with it, choose "Save File...", make sure you are still in the temporary directory (c:\instdvi in our example), and click OK. You 'll probably have to wait some time before it is downloaded. (Even if the Internet links themselves are running full speed --- not likely --- it would take four minutes to download the file over a 28.8k modem.)
Now switch focus to the MS-DOS prompt, by using Ctrl-Esc or Alt-Tab. If you do a directory listing, you should see the two files pkunzip.exe and dviview.zip.
Type the command
```
   pkunzip dviview
```
You should see PKUnzip inflate three files: setup.bat, mf.zip and dviwin.zip.
You now need to know what directory is your Windows directory. Usually, it is just c:\windows, although if you installed Windows 95/98 on a dual-boot system you may have called it c:\win95.
If you don't know what your Windows directory is, just go to the MS-DOS prompt and type
```
   set
```
You'll see a whole lot of settings. At (or near) the end should be one that says something like
```
   windir=C:\WINDOWS
```
that tells you what your Windows directory is.
Now type
```
   setup <windows-directory>
```
where <windows-directory> is your Windows directory, without any trailing backslash. For example, if your Windows directory is c:\windows, then type
```
   setup c:\windows
```
The setup program will check that the directory you specified is correct, and will then decompress the files for the DVI Viewer and the Metafont program.
If all is successful, the final message screen tells you how to set up links to the DVI Viewer from your web browser, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95/98.
Click here to download a sample DVI file right now. (It is less than two kilobytes in size, so should not take long to download.) If your web browser asks you for a Helper Application, or asks you to "Pick App...", then Browse into your Windows directory, and choose dviwin.exe.
Once the file has been downloaded, the "DVI Driver" should fire up. The first thing it will do, however, is generate a whole heap of fonts. This is because the test page uses every available font size that could possibly be used in a normal DVI file (although not every possible font!) The DVI Viewer must generate these fonts for 250 dot-per-inch viewing (which is the default setting when you install the package). Once these particular fonts have been generated, they'll never have to be generated on your machine ever again.
After you have made a coffee and waited for the fonts, the DVI Viewer should show the top of a test page. There are 17 lines altogether, decreasing in size in bold, and then again for non-bold characters; and a final line that contains a mathematical formula.
To move down a part of a page, press Enter; to move up part of a page, press Ctrl-Enter. To go to the same position on the next page, press PgDn, or with the mouse press the right-arrow at the top right corner of the window. Similarly, to go back a page, press PgUp or press the left arrow. To zoom in or out, press the magnifying glass buttons. To get a "mobile magnifying glass", click both mouse buttons at the same time, over the part of the screen you want to look at more closely; you can then let go of the buttons. (Click any mouse button to remove the zoom window.) Then have a look at the other commands in the menus, to get some familiarity with the viewer. Do not change any settings in the Options menu!
You can now safely delete the temporary directory you created earlier. For our example, if we are using DOS 5 or higher, we can just type
```
   cd \
   deltree instdvi
```
Double-check that you have a way of starting the DVI Viewer outside of your web browser:
- In Windows 3.1, go to the Program Manager and create a new item (from the File/New menu) called "DVI Viewer", with command line dviwin.exe. Set the working directory to be the directory in which you will usually store DVI files (or c:\ if none in particular).
- In Windows 95/98, add the DVI Viewer to your Start Programs menu.
You could now go back to my home page, and view any DVI file you like, by clicking on it.
If you only have 4 MB of RAM, you may hit problems if you try and move to 600 dpi resolution, or if you try and print on a printer that has too high a resolution. If you hit such problems, always go into the Options menu, Missing Fonts section, and make sure that the second button is pushed ("Execute command"), rather than the top one ("Take no action"), otherwise the DVI Viewer will never generate any fonts ever again, and if you move to a new resolution or print out a page, the results may look terrible. The only solution here is to get another 4 MB of RAM.

That's about it! If you have any problems, just send me an e-mail, and we should be able to get things sorted out!