[pdftex] distiller vs pdf(la)tex (not a flame war, just asking for info)

[franciszek holop]

hello list,

i am just about to engage in a holy war with a word/distiller
man, but being as lame as i am when it comes to typography as
a science i would like to ask you what (if any) advantages does
pdf(la)tex have over adobe distiller (say 4.0).

i strictly mean typographic issues not editor and document making
processes.

i mean which document is typographically more correct (kerning,
page greyness, etc)?

i never looked at word as a typesetting program (is it anyway?)
which does kerning, special ligatures (fi, ff, ffl, etc)...
it is a text processor, isn't?

when one distills a document from word, does the distiller
itself do some special typographical adjustments?
(i have a document here made w/distiller 4.0 from winword,
and `fi' is not a special ligature)

-f
-- 
monday: in christian countries, the day after the footbal.