[pdftex] Re: PDFTeX questions about fonts (plus .dvi vs. .pdf in PDFTeX)

[EvilBorisNet at Netscape.net]

Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de> writes:

> On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 07:25:13PM -0500, EvilborisNet at netscape.net wrote:
>
>>    Is there a plain TeX compatible macro package for figure insertion
>>    that is reasonably portable between .dvi and .pdf generation modes
>>    of PDFTeX?  I managed to hobble together a way to insert the figures
>>    directly using \pdfximage primitive, but that of course dies a
>>    horrible when in .dvi mode.  Having separate code for the two mode
>>    does not sound attractive...

> \input ifpdf.sty
>
> \def\MyGraphicsInclusionCommand#1{%
>   \ifpdf
>     ...
>   \else
>     ...
>   \fi
> }

Thanks.  This is a possibility, of course, though I was hoping to have
someone else do the work at defining what low-level things to do when
including the picture... :)

> Alternative: graphicx.sty does also work in plain TeX with the
> help of miniltx.tex.

A nice trick.  I did not know about miniltx.  I might want to try
this. 

On the other question I asked, is there an automagical way to have
dvips recognize stretched/shrunken fonts (autoexpand-style)?  I would
imagine (knowing nothing about the subject) that conceptually one
needs TFMs generated (which is what I would ideally want to avoid) and
then perhaps some virtual font arrangement to map the expanded fonts
back to "normal" ones?

Thanks again.