Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 UW 5/3/83; site uw-june Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!edsel!bentley!hoxna!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!furuta From: furuta@uw-june (Richard Furuta) Newsgroups: net.text Subject: Re: DVI question Message-ID: <2056@uw-june> Date: Tue, 11-Dec-84 05:15:45 EST Article-I.D.: uw-june.2056 Posted: Tue Dec 11 05:15:45 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 12-Dec-84 05:22:36 EST References: <4755@utzoo.UUCP> Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 25 >I hate to tell you this, but even TeX has to care about the output >device. Things like character widths affect line breaks, and widths >are seldom the same from one device to another. The use of device- >independent units of measurement is a red herring; the quality of the >output is still going to be poor if the formatter has the wrong idea >about what device the stuff is headed for. Well, to take this definition to another level of pickiness, I assert that this is not "device dependence" but instead "environment dependence." With TeX, you get the Metafonted fonts and the point of all of that is to give you an approximation of a consistent environment for the different devices you want to print to. Poor quality output from certain devices reflects differences between what they provide and the "ideal device" that TeX expects to find. The fact that you find different width fonts on different devices is a reflection of real world factors (like different designers, copyrights, and trade secrets). None of this changes the fact that TeX will produce the same output file for two radically different devices as long as they share the same environment (i.e., fonts). The DVI file can be (and often is) transferred between computers and sites for printing on devices of differing resolutions and abilities. Ditroff, on the other hand, imbeds information about the specific characteristics of the device into its output format. --Rick