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[Pierre MacKay]

>Adrian Dusa wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Thanks very much anyways ;)
>>At first it seemed like a pretty straighforward task, but I guess what I want 
>>to achieve is not that easy.
>>    
>>
This thread accidentally illustrates one of the perils of adopting 
“black-box” solutions to a task such as typesetting. When you dodge the 
dvi > dvips > ps2pdf route to final output, you give up the access to 
fine adjustments that is easily available from dvips and ghostscript. 
(There would even be the possibility of going into the DVI file itself, 
and modifying the multiplication factor directly, but that seems more 
geeky than is necessary.) Years ago, before desktop lasers at 1200 dpi 
became available, I used to provide camera-ready copy (for a 
photographic plate-maker) at an effective 720 dpi by setting at the 
target size and using dvips to produce 600 dpi at \magstep1. Then the 
printer reduced the images back down to true size. (I could also have 
set \magnification at the beginning of the TeX document, and perhaps 
that can still be done in LaTeX.) A similar effect could be achieved in 
PostScript, but it might be necessary to bracket each page in a gsave 
grestore group. Dvips provides for that with bop-hook and eop-hook.


When you have nothing but PDF to work with, it seems, from the various 
recommendations made (including my own), that you are at the mercy of 
the gui printer menu, which is commonly put together by people who “know 
much better than you do” what you want to do. One of the great things 
about using TeX and its auxiliary software is that you are liberated 
from this sort of arrogance.

Pierre MacKay