References: <13938.39518.68424.927988@fell.open.ac.uk>
            <199812092035.VAA16014@na6.mathematik.uni-tuebingen.de>
            <v03110702b29ab433e75a@[130.237.37.82]>
            <199812141457.IAA15514@dcdrjh.fnal.gov>
            <13941.11832.164081.296097@srahtz>
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In-Reply-To:  <13941.11832.164081.296097@srahtz>; from Sebastian Rahtz on Mon,
              Dec 14, 1998 at 03:26:48PM +0000
Date:         Mon, 14 Dec 1998 17:08:57 +0000
From: Timothy Murphy <tim@MATHS.TCD.IE>
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
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Subject:      Re: portable LaTeX
Status: R

On Mon, Dec 14, 1998 at 03:26:48PM +0000, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>
> why i should want to do tex->dvi->dvips->ps2pdf->pdf when i can do
> tex->pdf, with much higher quality, i am not sure :-}

I believe the discussion here, and on the pdftex mailing list,
provide very strong arguments for using a "mid-language" like DVI.
It's madness, in my view, to modify the TeX engine
in order to allow inclusion of particular graphic formats.
And the discussion about the internal semantics of new pdfTeX primitives,
most of which would be far better dealt with
as \special's in a DVI file,
leads me to conclude that pdfTeX and Knuth TeX
are rapidly diverging.
(Fortunately Thanh seems far more conservative than his followers.)

While Thanh's pdfTeX is a marvellous piece of work,
which satisfied an urgent need,
in my view it is fundamentally misconceived,
and will in time be replaced by a version based on possibly extended DVI.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland