[pdftex] dvi output from pdflatex?

[Paul Vojta]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 01:19:53AM +0200, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> John Culleton writes:
>  > In pdftex and Context there are one line commands (not macros)  that 
>  > will change the output, assuming they don't get overruled on the 
>  > command line:
>  > For pdftex:
>  > \pdfoutput 1 %pdf
>  > \pdfoutput 0 %dvi
>  > for Context:
>  > \setupoutput[pdf]
>  > or
>  > \setupoutput[dvi]
>  > 
>  > These are usually the first statements in the first file of the 
>  > compile.
> 
>  > No doubt pdflatex has something suitably more complex to do the same 
>  > thing.  
>  
> Nonsense.  \pdfoutput is a primitive and can be used in LaTeX the same
> way as it can be used in plain Tex or Context.

Yes, but does it screw something up when you do it?  Who knows.

As an example, you could do \font\foo=ptmr7t\foo Test of \emph{italic},
but you wouldn't get the results that some users would expect.

>  > No doubt pdflatex has something suitably more complex to do the same 
>  > thing.  
> 
> Yeah, LaTeX indeed provides something which is more powerful than what
> you propose.  Look into Heiko's package "ifpdf".  What you propose is
> quite crude. Please study Heiko's code before you come up with such
> platitudes.  ifpdf should work with plain TeX and Context too.

ifpdf does not set \pdfoutput.

--Paul Vojta, vojta at math.berkeley.edu