handyfloss

I use the PowerDot class to make presentations (such as the one in a previous post), and I have come across a nasty problem in the current testing branch of Debian (Lenny). Obviously it is bound to affect any other distro relying on Debian, such as Ubuntu.

The problem is discussed in this thread in freelists.org, and a solution is given by Hendri Adriaens in the tug.org bug page.

In short, when selecting paper=screen paper size in a PowerDot .tex file, the current dvips (version 5.96.1, provided by the package texlive-bin version 2007-12) generates a PostScript file with a wrong paper size. To fix it, you can get the following file:

% wget http://tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/Master/texmf/dvips/config/config.ps

and put it where the following command tells you:

% kpsewhich --format='dvips config' config.ps

after backing up the old (buggy) one, just in case. For example:

% mv /etc/texmf/dvips/config/config.ps /etc/texmf/dvips/config/config.ps.backup
% mv config.ps /etc/texmf/dvips/config/

This fixes the problem for me.