[tex-live] Non-PDF documentation
David Kastrup
dak at gnu.org
Tue Feb 9 03:54:57 CET 2010
Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> writes:
> On 8 February 2010 Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard wrote:
>
> > David Kastrup wrote:
> > >> This was discussed in depth already. DVI is not an option at
> > >> all because DVI files don't incorporate all the needed resources
> > >> (fonts, graphics,...).
> > >
> > > TeXlive has those resources. TeXlive is not CTAN or the web.
> > >
> > The reasoning is as follows:
> > 1. DVI is not suitable for the web, hence not suitable for CTAN.
> > 2. The material in TeX Live is the material from CTAN.
> > 3. Therefore, there will be PDFs in TeX Live.
> >
> > Besides, TeX Live doesn't always have the resources. The fonts used
> > in a given DVI may not be part of a given TeX Live installation
> > (because the installation is not a full install, or the fonts are
> > non-free, etc.)
> >
> > (I can find other arguments for PDF, but I guess you'll disagree
> > with them, so I try to keep the discussion on the technical
> > points.)
>
> There are some other technical reasons. Many documents conatain
> \pdfliteral and \special commands which can't be processed by dvi
> viewers. They have to be provided as PDF.
"Many" meaning a small ratio.
> > If you want to have DVI's in your local installation of TeX Live,
> > please write a script to generate them. If it works, feel free to
> > report success so that others who prefer DVI can benefit from it.
>
> David, do you insist on DVI or are you mostly interested in source
> specials or synctex?
I am not insisting on anything. I am not going to do particular
applications requiring premade DVI files in the foreseeable future. It
just happens that a number of things (including fast viewing) work
better with DVI. But a large part of those things are nice to have
while working on documents of your own, and that does not concern
packaged docs.
--
David Kastrup
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