Bug#156406: dvips executing commands

[Michael Zuther <zuther@min.uni-bremen.de>]

Package: tetex-bin

Version: 1.0.7+20011202

There is a bug in dvips, which prevents for example the generation of an
eps-file from a tif-file by the program tiff2ps.

Here is the example code from the tex file:

  \documentclass[11pt]{article}
  \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
  \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
  \usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}

  \DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{eps}{.tif.bb}{`tiff2ps #1}
  \graphicspath{{GRAPHICS/}}

  \begin{document}
  \unitlength 1mm
  \begin{picture}(50,42)
  \put(0,0){\includegraphics[width=50mm]{tiger.tif}}
  \end{picture}
  \end{document}

The subdirectory GRAPHICS contains the tif-file and the bounding-box-file.

Executing "dvips -o tif-ps-test.ps tif-ps-test.dvi" ends in an error
message:

  This is dvips(k) 5.86e Copyright 2001 Radical Eye Software
  (www.radicaleye.com)
  ' TeX output 2002.08.12:1503' -> bongo.ps
  <texc.pro><special.pro>. [1
  dvips.old: Execution of  <tiff2ps GRAPHICS/tiger.tif> failed
  ]

As a workaround a have renamed dvips to dvips.err and installed
an older dvips from Suse Linux (7.0), which works fine:

  This is dvips(k) 5.86 Copyright 1999 Radical Eye Software
  (www.radicaleye.com)
  ' TeX output 2002.08.12:1503' -> bongo.ps
  <texc.pro><special.pro>. [1<tiff2ps GRAPHICS/tiger.tif>]

I don't think that this workaround is good solution, because other users
don't have the opportunity. It would be very nice if you could find out
where the error in the new version of dvips was introduced and do the
corrections necessary.

I am using Debian 3.0, kernel 2.2.20, libc6 2.2.5-10

Best wishes

Michael Zuther

---------------------
www.min.uni-bremen.de