[6553] in Athena Bugs
letter.sty + dvi2ps
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Dec 6 13:37:16 1990
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 90 10:30:11 PST
From: Aaron Goodisman <aaron@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: eichin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, bug-sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, tex-hackers@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: aaron@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <eichin@athena.mit.edu>'s message of Wed, 5 Dec 1990 23:50:13 PST <9012060750.AA23597@portnoy.MIT.EDU>
From: <eichin@athena.mit.edu>
A user was using the letter style to produce form letters, ...
The possible places that this could be considered "broken":
1) letter.sty should have pagestyle{plain} (?) so that the
numbers don't matter, and thus it need not reset them
\pagestyle{empty} is better, because {plain} does use page numbers on
pages past the first (of each letter).
2) dvi2ps should have a way of selecting pages in their own
right, instead of as they are "labelled".
Fine, but it should keep a way of selecting pages by their TeX page
labels, because those are the numbers that show up on the pages. This
is also a problem when you have documents with roman numeral page
numbers before the "real" page numbers start.
3) dvi2ps could also have warned explicitly that no pages were
selected.
A mildly relevant parable from r.h.f:
The UNIX Philosophy
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas guage, nor any of the
other numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
driver makes a mistake, a GIANT "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard. "The experienced driver," says he, "will usually know
what's wrong."
-- Aaron
