1 Introduction

1.1 Why another Windows dvi viewer ?

There are many previewers for dvi files under Win32. The most popular is probably Dviwin by H. Sendoukas. However it lacks some important features:

• the ability to recursively search directories for font files,
• the ability to use .vf files or display PostScript fonts,
• the ability to display PostScript images.

Unfortunately, the Dviwin sources were never put into the public domain; on the other side of the fence, Xdvi under Unix has these features, is widely used and its sources are available. Xdvi(k) uses the kpathsea library to search directories, already used in the Web2c-win32 port of TeX, so there was some interest in porting Xdvi(k) to Win32. It turned out that this was far more than just a port, since X Window is far from Win32. All the user interface and the graphical part has been rewritten.

1.2 Features

The most important features of Windvi are as follows:

• monochrome or grey scale bitmaps (antialiasing) for fonts,
• easy navigation through the dvi file
  • page by page,
  • with different increments (by 5 or 10 pages at a time)
  • goto home, end, or any page within the document,
• different shrink factors to zoom page in and out,
• magnifying glass to show the page at the pixel level,
• use of .vf fonts
• display .pk .gf font files
• automatic generation of missing PK files even for PostScript fonts,
• tracking dvi file changes, and automatic reopening,
• understanding Omega extended dvi files,
• drag-and-drop file from the Windows shell explorer,
• color support (a-la dvips),
• real-time logging of background font generation,
• visualization of PostScript inclusions,
• graphical transformations under NT only,
• support of HyperTeX specials,
• printing support through the unified printer driver.