[H-GEN] xdvi factoids

[Martin Pool]

It's that time of the year when students all over the country are
sweating in latex...

I've always wondered how to get xdvi to scale the page properly, and
just worked it out the other day.  It's a bit confusing because the
buttons on the screen only seem to permit very strongly magnified
views, and there seems to be no way to return to the default zoom
factor.  (There's a reason why people get passionate about Mac GUI
style and not about Athena.)

The truth is that xdvi uses a prefix command system, just like less
and vi.

So, from the fine manual:

       s      Changes  the shrink factor to the given number.  If
              no number is given, the smallest factor that  makes

X Version 11             11 December 1994                       7

              the  entire  page  fit  in the window will be used.
              (Margins are ignored in this computation.)

That is, typing `1s' will show the page at 600 screen pixels per page
inch, `2s' will show it at half that, `3s' at a third, and so on.
`200s' will put your contribution to the sum of human knowledge in
proper perspective. ;-)

Just thought you might like to know.

-- 
Martin Pool

Every day, computers are making people easier to use
		-- Steve Edberg