Unhelpful error message when DVI support is missing

[Adam Buchbinder]

Binary package hint: evince

I am running evince 2.20.1-0ubuntu1 on Gutsy.

When trying to open a DVI file without tetex-bin installed, evince displays the message "Unable to open document: DVI document has incorrect format". This is an incorrect error message, as there's nothing wrong with the DVI; the problem is that the user's system doesn't have DVI support. Given only this message, the user has no way of knowing that they need to install another package in order to view DVI files; the logical conclusion for them to draw is that the DVI file they have is corrupted.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for the report, this doesn't happens with the evince version availble on intrepid, there's no need to have the tetex-bin package installed to see the file. thanks.

[Adam Buchbinder (adam-buchbinder)]

evince 2.22.2-0ubuntu1 on Hardy still does the same if there's no TeX installation. Whether the TeX distribution involved is teTeX or TeX Live, the question is what evince's behavior is when presented with a valid DVI in the absence of a TeX distribution.

I don't have an Intrepid box available, but if opening a valid DVI document with evince on a machine that doesn't have TeX installed still gives an error implying that there's a problem with the document, rather than with the installation, then this bug is still valid. It has absolutely nothing to do with the transition from teTeX to TeX Live.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the issue is known upstream, you can read about it on http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=543905