Dan Luecking wondered in comp.text.tex at Fri Nov 05 20:29:52 CET 2004:
[By the way, does anyone know why dvips (5.94a, fptex) writes this error message: ==> Fatal error occurred, the output PDF file is not finished! when making a .ps file (definitely NOT a .pdf file!). I encountered it while running tests of dvips behavior on invalid .pfb files.]
File writet1.c is shared by pdftex and dvips. The pdftex_fail() function there is only used by dvips; for pdftex it's provided by utils.c within pdftexdir. The wrong dvips message comes from pdftex_fail() in writet1.c. So one should change "PDF" into "PS" there. When i do this change, a call of dvips using a buggy .pfb file gives: ==> Fatal error occurred, the output PS file is not finished! pdftex gives instead: ==> Fatal error occurred, the output PDF file is not finished! Regards, Hartmut