Section 2.1 paragraph three says that this document assumes some sort of dvi
viewer is available. I suspect that the idea of a device independent file
format has not been sufficiently developed at this point to just drop it in as
an assumption. I see that this is covered in section 1.3 of the Introduction,
but acronyms are quickly forgotten. Also, the explanation in the introduction
makes dvi appear to be an unimportant file extension particular to Tex, now I
am discovering that like most things in the Open Systems realm this is far from
the case. This sudden expansion from particular to global comes as something of
a shock. When I click on the "View" menu item in Lyx I am faced with a
bewildering number of options especially in the two sections who's labels
include the term "other." I suspect all these options have something to do with
a proliferation in the use of the dvi extension or filetype (pardon the use of
Windows terms). At the very least I would at least expect the (good) summary of
terms (Tex, Latex...) on page 9 (section 1.3) of the Introduction to include a
mention of dvi. If I understand the situation correctly the definition for Tex
should read something like, "Typesetting language with macro capability with
typical output being a .dvi file."
Now that I think about it dvi may be the most important issue there is when
discussing the Lyx stack. I believe that Adobe and Postscript would have taken
over the presentation world instead of having become a niche market had they
(Adobe and Apple) sold products and licenses at a reasonable price rather than
exploiting the absence of available desk top publishing options so many years
ago. It is only greed that appears to have created the empty space that Tex,
Latex, and Lyx have been stepping into all these years. Not to worry, that
space will probably remain available in the foreseeable future.
