[texhax] PostScript output (from XeTeX)?

[Pierre MacKay]

On 12/2/2010 10:55 AM, William Adams wrote:
> On Dec 2, 2010, at 11:29 AM, Peter Davis wrote:
>
>> I tried asking this on the XeTeX list a couple of days ago, but have gotten no responses.  Maybe someone here can help me.
>>
>> I gather I can get either PDF or XDV output from XeTeX.  If I want PostScript, are there xdvps drivers, analogous to Rokicki's dvips?
> No, there isn't.
>
> If one wants a .ps file from a xetex document open the .pdf and print to a .ps file from Adobe Reader.
>
> William
I often look to your answers for advice, but my question about this 
piece of advice is:

                       Have you ever tried to read the stuff that 
results from conversion from PDF to PS?

As for editing it (which is sometimes unavoidable) it is pretty well 
impossible.

As a later message pointed out.  PDF is a document delivery system, with 
very little
concern for document creation, except in black-box mode.  I really do 
not think that
will change.  As for the permanence of PDF.  PDF/A is part of an 
attempt, (apparently
most actively supported in Europe) to forestall Adobe's tendency to make 
unannounced
and incompatible changes in PDF (think about the disappearance of 
small-caps and old-style
figures between Reader 6 and Reader 7, which leaves any earlier PDFs 
that includes those characters
unusable unless you do some really tricky editing inside the file) but 
the industry is already
into PDF/X-[1-5],  and perhaps beyond.

DVI is not an archive format, and I can't imagine anyone trying to use 
ot that way.  TeX source
is the archive format.

Pierre MacKay

Pierre MacKay