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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