[tex-live] Non-PDF documentation

David Kastrup dak at gnu.org
Tue Feb 9 03:54:57 CET 2010


Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> writes:

> On 8 February 2010 Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard wrote:
>
>  > David Kastrup wrote:
>  > >> This was discussed in depth already.  DVI is not an option at
>  > >> all because DVI files don't incorporate all the needed resources
>  > >> (fonts, graphics,...).
>  > > 
>  > > TeXlive has those resources.  TeXlive is not CTAN or the web.
>  > > 
>  > The reasoning is as follows:
>  > 1. DVI is not suitable for the web, hence not suitable for CTAN.
>  > 2. The material in TeX Live is the material from CTAN.
>  > 3. Therefore, there will be PDFs in TeX Live.
>  > 
>  > Besides, TeX Live doesn't always have the resources. The fonts used
>  > in a given DVI may not be part of a given TeX Live installation
>  > (because the installation is not a full install, or the fonts are
>  > non-free, etc.)
>  > 
>  > (I can find other arguments for PDF, but I guess you'll disagree
>  > with them, so I try to keep the discussion on the technical
>  > points.)
>
> There are some other technical reasons.  Many documents conatain
> \pdfliteral and \special commands which can't be processed by dvi
> viewers.  They have to be provided as PDF.

"Many" meaning a small ratio.

>  > If you want to have DVI's in your local installation of TeX Live,
>  > please write a script to generate them. If it works, feel free to
>  > report success so that others who prefer DVI can benefit from it.
>
> David, do you insist on DVI or are you mostly interested in source
> specials or synctex?

I am not insisting on anything.  I am not going to do particular
applications requiring premade DVI files in the foreseeable future.  It
just happens that a number of things (including fast viewing) work
better with DVI.  But a large part of those things are nice to have
while working on documents of your own, and that does not concern
packaged docs.

-- 
David Kastrup


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