X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2510" "Tue" "15" "December" "1998" "03:23:28" "+0000" "Timothy Murphy" "tim@MATHS.TCD.IE" nil "63" "Re: portable LaTeX" "^Date:" nil nil "12" nil "portable LaTeX" nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id EAA03197; Tue, 15 Dec 1998 04:23:35 +0100 (MET) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.2) by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <10.2473AD76@listserv.gmd.de>; Tue, 15 Dec 1998 4:23:34 +0100 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 413033 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Tue, 15 Dec 1998 04:23:30 +0100 Received: from salmon.maths.tcd.ie (mmdf@salmon.maths.tcd.ie [134.226.81.11]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id EAA28078 for ; Tue, 15 Dec 1998 04:23:29 +0100 (MET) Received: from boole.maths.tcd.ie by salmon.maths.tcd.ie with SMTP id ; 15 Dec 98 03:23:29 +0000 (GMT) References: <13941.11832.164081.296097@srahtz>; <13938.39518.68424.927988@fell.open.ac.uk> <199812092035.VAA16014@na6.mathematik.uni-tuebingen.de> <199812141457.IAA15514@dcdrjh.fnal.gov> <13941.11832.164081.296097@srahtz> <19981214170857.D29182@maths.tcd.ie> <19981214190530.B8449@maths.tcd.ie> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i Message-ID: <19981215032328.B3729@maths.tcd.ie> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: ; from Hans Aberg on Mon, Dec 14, 1998 at 10:18:24PM +0100 Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 03:23:28 +0000 From: Timothy Murphy Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: portable LaTeX Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 3121 On Mon, Dec 14, 1998 at 10:18:24PM +0100, Hans Aberg wrote: > >I don't understand the question. > >Since TeX does not understand graphics in any format while pdfTeX does, > >there is obviously a modification, as indeed is clear from pdftex.ch > Depending wether the way of TeX parsing is changed, or if it merely > compiles to PDF instead of DVI. By TeX I mean the program defined by Knuth's tex.web . To use it in any other sense will simply cause confusion. > >However, my main point was that since pdftex is a single monolithic program, > >every additional graphics format -- PDF, PS, TIFF, etc -- > >must involve further modification to pdfTeX itself. > > This is however a core question: So does PDF not itself allow inclusion of > other formats like say GIF, JPEG? I don't think it allows GIFs in any sense; it does allow suitably wrapped JPEG (DCTEncoding). However, you would still need to modify pdfTeX to create the PDF object encapsulating a JPEG (as I am sure Thanh will do in time, if he hasn't already). > >> But will an extended DVI suffice as a new byte-code for WWW publishing? I don't know what that means; I take it that any format in the world can be sent over the "Web". Whether a particular program (browser) can display it is simply up to the program. There is nothing special about browsers, as far as I can see. xdvi is a program that can display remote DVIs; if enough people used it like this it would be called a browser. > >I take more or less the opposite view to that generally expressed here. > >In my view, it is up to browsers to accept > >generally accepted formats like PDF or DVI -- > >it's not up to the outside world > >to try to convert information into the format expected by the browser. > > If you want it that way, you still need a WWW byte-code that allows the > inclusion of such formats. So you are back to the same problem. I don't know what a "WWW byte-code" is, and so I don't understand the rest of your posting. Browsers already "understand" DVI, in the sense that you can set them to run a particular program when they meet a file called foo.dvi . They could be a bit more graceful about it; and I expect they soon will be. The idea that we have to write in HTML -- or any *ML -- because Microsoft and Netscape say so I find bizarre in the extreme; it's like saying we must wear brown shoes if we want to go abroad. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie tel: +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland