I would like to use microtype with the latex, dvips, ps2pdf workflow. Is it possible to use it in this workflow? If it can be used are there any options that I need to call when using microtype?
1 Answer
Yes, you can have some microtype features with DVI output. Namely, if you are using the pdftex or luatex engine to produce DVI output, you can have protrusion (margin correction), even by default. Knuth's old tex engine won't work.
As Table 1 in the microtype manual tells us, you could even use font expansion with DVI and the aforementioned engines, but this requires to have the shrinked/expanded fonts already in place, they won't be generated for you. So unless you know exactly what you are doing, this is not for you, hence font expansion is disabled by default for DVI output.
Finally, no extra microtype option is needed for DVI output. There is the DVIoutput when loading the package, but this just forces DVI output on the pdftex engine. It is not needed when you already request DVI output via pdflatex -output-format=dvi.
TL;DR You can have protrusion for DVI, which is great, but no other of the (many) cool features.
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@Robert Yes I know, I mentioned that table, too. I left it out here as those two features do not improve the text layout per se.– mafpAug 23, 2013 at 21:18
microtypepackage, you need to use a TeX format that creates a.pdffile directly. Microtype won't work with the (by now very) old LaTeX/TeX way of creating a.dvifile first, followed by a.psfile and eventually a.pdffile. Incidentally: Why would you want to go the .dvi -> .ps -> .pdf route if you can create a .pdf file directly?microtypemanual..dvioutput. Indeed, pdf(La)TeX can be instructed to produce.dvioutput instead of.pdfoutput; in such cases, as you note, the protrusion feature of themicrotypepackage is indeed available.