On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 13:02:57 +0800, Bob Williams wrote:
> I'm just getting started with TeX and LaTeX for Linux - it comes with many
> distributions. So what I say is by no means authoritative (Is it ever?).
<snip>
> "But wait! There's more!" All this is based on plain text files. So
> it's VERY cross-platform compatible. Run TeX in DOS, Win, Linux and
> more. It's also compact. A recent document I downloaded in TeX format
> was less than 200 kb, while the corresponding GZipped Postscript was 300+
> amd the (I know!) PDF was 450 something.
hmmm... you must have been looking at the .tex file; the resulting .dvi
file would've been much smaller, I think.
> BTW, the process of conversion is two step (sometimes more) process where
> you convert your file first to a device independent file, dvi, and then
> crunch that into your preferred format. There are dvi viewers for DOS in
> the emtex packages and ghostscript (for Linux and Windows) allows viewing
> as well.
I should read before I speak.
BTW, .tex is made for humans to work with. The desired end of all this,
the .dvi file is smaller because it's machine-readable only (unless
you're really comfortable with debug).
I recently finally found a copy of the PDF specification.txt. It's 1 meg
in size and quite incomplete and is unreadable. My plan is to reformat
and decode it enough to make an app capable of rendering pdfspec.pdf in
a readable manner.
I also found the DVI specification .DVI (other formats available, I just
chose this one). I printed it on two and a half sheets, front only. I
understand the specification perfectly after one perusal. In addition to
what PDF can do, it does a better job of rendering mathematical formulas
(its original purpose) and tables. Unlike later versions of PDF, there
is no internal provision for file compression. Why bother?
-- Arachne V1.60, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
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