Why powerdot on Mac (MacTeX 2011) is giving me a shrunk dvi output?

Question

I'm trying to use the powerdot class that comes with TeX Live 2011 on Mac OS X Lion (MacTex). I'm using the sample file from docs, powerdot-example.tex. On the command line, I use

latex powerdot-example.tex

latex powerdot-example.tex

And it gives me a dvi file. However, the contents of this dvi file are much smaller then the paper size, I'm not understading what is the cause of this.

This sample file has a lyx cousin file: powerdot-example.lyx, which I can open in the LyX editor and chose File>Export>DVI from Menu. When I do that, the dvi output is right, and I'm not able to figure out how LyX is doing it right while I'm unable to do the same from the command line.

Also, a detail that is not so important, the sample file tries to use a randomdots slide option which has no effect when opening a pdf file created from the dvi file, while opening the dvi file directly with xdvi shows the random dots background decoration on the given slide.

Answer 1

powerdot works strictly with PostScript specials for dvips, so it's very unlikely that it works with dvipdfm(x).

The correct path to get a PDF from a powerdot source is

latex -> dvips -> ps2pdf

which can be shortened with a script present on TeX Live (don't know on MiKTeX)

simpdftex latex <filename>

The dimensions of the DVI output are mostly irrelevant, as the final PDF will be scaled to fit the screen.

Answer 2

Found it out.

I had to remove the nopsheader class option from the example source file and also I must use latex / dvips / ps2pdf to at last obtain a correct pdf even though the dvi file still wrong.

Using dvipdfm(x) does not produce a correct pdf with powerdot.