creating PDF files

[Larry Tseng]

Christina Thiele writes:

> George W. Benthien writes:
> >
> > I have a fairly long TeX document. If I convert to PDF by printing to
> > Acrobat Distiller out of DVIWINDO it takes several minutes to convert.
> > However, if I print to a PostScript file and then distill this file, the
> > conversion is very rapid. Do you know why there is such a time
difference
> > and if there are any other advantages to using the first approach?
> >
>
> I see there's been no reply to your query of June 3 ... Let me point
> you to a few sources of documentation which may shed light on your
> query.
>
> I _think_ it's possible that the difference is due to the difference
> which exists between DVIWindo and DVISPONE. In the Technical Addendum,
> there's a largish section on this:
>
>    3.1. DVIWindo printing versus DVIPSONE printing
>
> Indeed, all of section 3 is about `Printing'. You may well find some
> nugget buried therein.
>
> I believe that there are several .txt information files that come with
> Y&YTeX that related directly to acrobat, pdf, and related topics. I'd
> recommend a search on *.txt in c:\yandy and poke around there.
>
> Let us know what you find out.
>
> Ch.
>

I think DVIWINDO printing without DVIPSONE uses Windows itself to convert
the displayed material (coded in Windows Metafile?), not the DVI file, into
postscript. This is why you can print to PCL printers with this method (PCL
being the final code in this case).

This way of converting to postscript is not particularly efficient. The
results are also not as accurate since Windows Metafile does not have the
placement resolution as the DVI file itself.

Larry Tseng