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!hoxna!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!furuta From: furuta@uw-june (Richard Furuta) Newsgroups: net.text Subject: Re: DVI question Message-ID: <2073@uw-june> Date: Wed, 19-Dec-84 01:28:06 EST Article-I.D.: uw-june.2073 Posted: Wed Dec 19 01:28:06 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 20-Dec-84 04:07:19 EST References: <640@godot.UUCP> Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 25 >I digress. Formatters should be device independent if they are to be >portable, else many people will hack the program for their own >particular environment, each different from the other. TeX is device >independent; no line of code in TeX need ever change because of a >particular device, present or future. Really, that is no big deal: it >only amounts to specifying distances in absolute units and keeping >sufficient precision to prevent roundoff errors in all values. >-- >--Bruce Nemnich, Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA > ihnp4!godot!bruce, bjn@mit-mc.arpa ... soon to be bruce@godot.arpa The Scribe model in which the document is specified abstractly and the appearance of the output is adjusted to suit the particular device being used is an attractive alternative to the device independence of TeX. And they take care of the problem of multiple incompatible versions of the system by not distributing the sources [groan]. But seriously, what they do provide is a "database" and mechanisms for defining how new devices are to be treated (which works, assuming that the new device is "relatively" close to one they already support). Scribe <> is marvelously portable---the same input can be used in a large number of different documents or on a large number of differing devices. --Rick