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Hello Peter,<br>
<br>
I've redirected your message to <a moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:texhax@tug.org">texhax@tug.org</a>,
a mailing list for TeX that is widely frequented (the pdfTeX mailing
list is not really active). You'll find the list archives here: <br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax">http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax</a><br>
<br>
As for the questions:<br>
<br>
1) Thousands of pages per minutes is doable, but the speed really
depends on what you do with pdfTeX. Simply text can go really fast.
Complex operations can take much more time.<br>
2) pdfTeX implements the HZ-program and can do that both in dvi and
pdf.<br>
3) No. There exists complex procedures to use Open- or TrueType
fonts, but you don't want to go into that (me neither). In pdfTeX,
it's either tfm (TeX native font format) or PostScript T1. But:
there exist XeTeX and LuaTeX. Both allow you to use any kind of
font. XeTeX don't produce dvi, though -- but anyway you can't use
any font with dvi.<br>
<br>
No need to apologize, by the way.<br>
<br>
My two cents is: if you want a top-notch typographic system, use
ConTeXt MkIV; ConTeXt is TeX, but with many things on top of it. You
generally don't use TeX as is: instead, you use a set of macros,
often called a format, which perhaps you've written by yourself (in
which case you're free <i>and </i>lonely). ConTeXt is a format,
and it's probably the most powerful of all, at least when it comes
to typography. Speed is not its forte, though. LaTeX is another
format, it's a little bit faster, but if you're looking for
``InDesign composition, with suitable parameters'', I wouldn't
recommend it. Finally, you can write your own set of macros, but
that's definitely not the better way to start!<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
<br>
Le 23/10/2010 10:41, Peter Davis a écrit :
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTi=cQO-Ef37FP7_Ft2qwVUSeUnkd4vzEvYpKn8pY@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">I'm looking at the possibility of using TeX as a
composition server, something to compose blocks of text or pages
in a high volume workflow. From what I've learned, TeX, and in
particular pdfTeX, is capable of producing output that's very
similar to InDesign composition, with suitable parameters. So I
have a few question perhaps this audience can help with.
<div> <br>
</div>
<div>1) Is there any way to gauge roughly what kind of
throughput I could get? Could a single TeX process on a
state-of-the-art Intel box, for example, produce hundreds of
pages per minute? Thousands? Tens or hundreds of thousands?
(I'm assuming A4 or letter pages of just text.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>2) Is it only pdfTeX which uses hz-program-like
composition, with glyph scaling, etc.? If so, is it possible
to use pdfTeX to produce .dvi (or does .dvi prohibit the use
of glyph scaling)? I'd like to be able to generate bitmaps
for JPEG/GIF/PNG output as well as PDF.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>3) Will pdfTeX work with all the standard font formats? </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Apologies for my ignorance, but I'm eager to learn more.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thank you.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> -pd</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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