Thank you for your answer Alan!
On Tue, Apr 03, 2001 at 04:58:32PM -0400, Alan Shutko wrote: > Marcelo Chiapparini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > after running xdvi I noted that several *pk files appeared in > > /var/spool/texmf/pk/ljfour/public/cm. Why this? > > The Computer Modern fonts (the default latex fonts) are in Metafont, a > scalable font language developed by Knuth to go with TeX. In order to > display those characters, xdvi and dvips run metafont to create pk > fonts, which are bitmaps at a certain resolution and associated with a > certain device. > > Since this can take some time, those bitmaps are cached in > /var/spool/texmf/pk, so the next time you view a document using the > same fonts, the bitmaps don't have to be generated. > > (This is a bit of a simplification, but it's good enough for most work.) > Marcelo -- Marcelo Chiapparini DFT-IF/UERJ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
