Michael Shell: Testflow

Overview

Testflow is a diagnostic for testing LaTeX to PS/PDF print workflow. You can use it to check your LaTeX/dvips/pdfTeX system and printing setup.

The most recent version of Testflow is v1.1, which was released on January 10, 2007.

The changes over the previous release (v1.0) include:

Updated documentation (now in PDF form) to cover the newer LaTeX systems.
New duplex test to check front/back page alignment of duplex printers.
New Palladio hinting test.

See the testflow_doc.pdf file for complete documentation. Enjoy!

Obtaining Testflow

Testflow can be obtained at CTAN (The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network).

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: On my Unix system, the Palatino/Palladio fonts appear "crooked" for some magnifications of my PDF document. The problem does not seem to occur when printing. What is wrong?

The URW fonts for Unix systems currently being distributed with Ghostscript contain errors in the hinting of the Palatino/Palladio fonts. To fix this, upgrade to the very latest versions of the URW fonts. MS Windows versions of the Ghostscript fonts do not have this problem.

Q: Why can't I find the entries for the map files in my configuration files?

Starting with teTeX 2.0 (Unix systems) and MiKTeX 2.4 (MS Windows), the map files for all of the major TeX applications (e.g., dvips, pdftex, etc.) are managed by an updmap utility which is controlled by the contents of <texmf>/web2c/updmap.cfg. Make sure your updmap.cfg has:

dvipsPreferOutline true
LW35 URWkb
dvipsDownloadBase35 false
pdftexDownloadBase14 true
dvipdfmDownloadBase14 true

MixedMap bsr.map
MixedMap bsr-interpolated.map

Then, run updmap for teTeX 2.0 or MiKTeX systems (or updmap-sys to make the changes take effect system-wide for teTeX 3.0 systems as updmap does under teTeX 2.0). Note that the MIKTeX user guide recommends that updmap.cfg be edited using an application provided for this purpose: initexmf --edit-config-file updmap. For MiKTeX systems there is also an option to update the map files with the GUI configuration tool.

Q: Why don't my changes to pdfTeX's configuration have any effect?

For teTeX 2.0 and MiKTeX 2.4 and later systems, you have to rebuild the format files for the changes to take effect. For teTeX 2.0 and later, make the desired changes to <texmf>/tex/generic/pdftex/pdftexconfig.tex and then run fmtutil --all (or fmtutil-sys --all for a system-wide update under teTeX 3.0). For MiKTeX 2.4 and later make the desired changes to <texmf>/pdftex/config/pdftex.cfg (note that the MIKTeX user guide recommends that pdftex.cfg be edited using an application provided for this purpose: initexmf --edit-config-file pdftex) and then run initexmf --dump to rebuild the format files (or use the GUI configuration tool).

Q: When running ps2pdf, I get a warning message "Set UseCUEColor for UseDeviceIndependentColor to work properly." What's up with that?

It is a bug that affects Ghostscript version 8.54 when using the -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer option. One way to work around the problem is to add the Ghostscript option -dUseCIEColor=true to your ps2pdf script (note the typo "UseCUEColor" rather than the correct "UseCIEColor" in the error message). However, in my tests, this slows down ps2pdf processing by an order of magnitude. Another workaround is to use -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress. This annoyance hopefully will be corrected in future versions of Ghostscript.

Q: I use a GUI rather than a command shell to run LaTeX and so I cannot see prompts for input. How do I specify a paper size when compiling testflow.tex?

For shame. ;) At the start of the testflow.tex source code are definitions that have been commented out:

% *** paper size (choose one) ***
%\def\papertype{letterpaper}
%\def\papertype{a4paper}
%
% *** duplex page test (choose one) ***
%\def\makeduplexpage{yes}
%\def\makeduplexpage{no}

Uncomment two (one for each question) choices from the two types of options:

% *** paper size (choose one) ***
\def\papertype{letterpaper}
%\def\papertype{a4paper}
%
% *** duplex page test (choose one) ***
\def\makeduplexpage{yes}
%\def\makeduplexpage{no}

and testflow.tex will use those choices without prompting the user on the console.

Obtaining Support

You can obtain support for Testflow from:

The Usenet newsgroup comp.text.tex: This the primary means of support for LaTeX and dvips related issues.
You can contact me via the email address(es) at my contact page.: Please use this option only for packages that I maintain (not general help with LaTeX).

The Testflow Homepage