dviasm (1) Linux Manual Page

NAME

DVIasm – a TeX utility program for editing DVI files directly

SYNOPSIS

dviasm [<options>] <dvi_file>|<dvi_dump_file>

DESCRIPTION

DVIasm is a TeX utility program which is designed for editing DeVice-Independent (DVI) files directly. It consists of a single Python script, dviasm.py, in a human readable text format. It runs on any platform in which Python 3 is installed.

Features of DVIasm includes:

1) Disassemble a DVI file (or XeTeX XDV file) into a human-readable text file, the contents of which are easy to modify.

2) Assembles the output text file back to the binary format.

There are several alternatives for dumping and editing DVI files:

1) DVItype developed by Donald E. Knuth supports one-way conversion from DVI to a text format. There are also some derivatives: pDVItype for pTeX, upDVItype for upTeX, ODVItype for Omega.

2) The programs dv2dt and dt2dv can be used in pairs to allow two-way conversion between DVI and the DVI Text Language (DTL).

3) The program dvispc (part of DVIOUT previewer) also has an ability to convert between DVI and text.

Among those, DVIasm is designed to allow users to edit DVI files easily, for example by unifying “right1”-“right4” to a single command “right” which can be used regardless of the amount of move.

OPTIONS

–version

Show program’s version number and exit.

-h, –help

Show this help message and exit.

-u <STR>, –unit=<STR>

Set unit [default: `pt’]. Allowed values are: `sp’, `pt’, `bp’, `mm’, `cm’ and `in’.

-o <FILE>, –output=<FILE>

Set filename for output instead of stdout.

-e <STR>, –encoding=<STR>

Set encoding for input/output of dumped text [default: `utf8′]. Allowed values are: `ascii’, `latin1′, `utf8′, `sjis’ and `eucjp’. When used with the option -p (or –ptex), allowed values are only `utf8′, `sjis’ and `eucjp’.

# NOTE: This feature does not support dumping through stdout.

-x <STR>, –xxx-encoding=<STR>

Set encoding for interpreting `xxx:’ strings [default: `none’]. Allowed values are: `none’, `utf8′, `sjis’ and `eucjp’.

This option allows users to specify the correct encoding for dumping/compiling the contents of \special.

Typical usages are as follows:

1) By default, the contents of \special are dumped/compiled as byte-to-byte escape sequences in `