Which DVI viewer on linux?

Question

Today, to my complete disbelief, I realized evince on Gnome 3 is not able to open DVI files. Which readers do you suggest, and why? It would prefer gnome applications of course, but I don't mind KDE/Qt either.

update: I'm on Fedora with TeX Live 2011.

On Fedora you need to install the separate package evince-dvi to enable DVI support. — Martin, May 04 '12 at 15:15
@Martin: see my reply in Jasper's answer. TeX Live causes some problems with that. — Riccardo T., May 04 '12 at 15:20
Are you really sure that you want DVI? See Is there any reason to compile to DVI rather than PDF these days? — Marco, May 04 '12 at 15:26
@Marco: unfortunately yes, I do. A package I need uses pstricks. — Riccardo T., May 04 '12 at 15:30
@JasperLoy: I did, but there's another issue there. It's OT here, but basically the output shown in xdvi has the correct page size, while on the other hand the converted pdf cuts the right margin. — Riccardo T., May 04 '12 at 15:35
@Riccardo: Since page size seems to be the actual problem you want to solve, why not ask a question about that? — Caramdir, May 04 '12 at 16:29
@Caramdir: I'll surely do it, but not now because I don't have time to write it properly :) — Riccardo T., May 04 '12 at 16:56
@Caramdir: I wrote my problem in another question, here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/54749/trouble-with-latex-and-dvips-with-an-fsttcs-documentclass — Riccardo T., May 07 '12 at 08:37

score 12 · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-04T15:26:26.130

12

By default, one needs to install the basic TeX packages from the Ubuntu repositories to view DVI files with Evince on Ubuntu. Similarly, one needs to install evince-dvi from the Fedora repositories to view DVI files with Evince on Fedora.

If you are using TeX Live installed directly from TUG, you may also use the xdvi provided.

edited May 04 '12 at 15:26

answered May 04 '12 at 15:06

I'm using TeX Live, aren't there any other options apart from xdvi, please? – Riccardo T. May 04 '12 at 15:11
Unfortunately I can't: there's a conflict arising from the kpathsea-2007-66.fc16 package, which is required by evince-dvi and made obsolete by the latest one from TeX Live. – Riccardo T. May 04 '12 at 15:17
What's wrong with xdvi? I find it quick and easy to use. (Not that I use .dvi much anymore....) – jon May 04 '12 at 15:34

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered May 04 '12 at 15:52

5

okular, the default and universal KDE viewer supports DVI files very well (at least as far as I remember, because I rarely work with DVI files for some time now).

answered May 04 '12 at 15:52

nplatis

2,090

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered May 04 '12 at 16:26

If you're running the 64bit version of Fedora, you can download modified evince packages here: http://mgieseki.fedorapeople.org/evince/

evince-dvi is built against the latest kpathsea package from Jindrich Novy's TeX Live 2011 repository. Thus, installing the dvi evince extension works properly together with TeX Live 2011.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 11 '21 at 09:53

TeX Live from Ubuntu/Debian and that from TUG have different directory structures. In both cases xdvi work fine because they are configured correspondingly. xReader, Evince, and Okular work fine with TeX Live from Ubuntu/Debian and do not with TUG TeX Live. Atril is configured to work with TUG TeX Live.

Which DVI viewer on linux?

4 Answers4

Linked