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Distributing dvi-files (was: Atomic encoding)
- To: math-font-discuss@cogs.susx.ac.uk
- Subject: Distributing dvi-files (was: Atomic encoding)
- From: Joerg.Knappen@uni-mainz.de
- Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 21:09:54 +0100
Laurent,
I don't think, that storing documents in dvi-format only is a good idea. I
have made too many bad experiences.
The first is, that dvi-files aren't really portable. Under VMS you have
first to convert an ftp'ed dvi-file to the usual record structure (the
easier task, if you know about it). The worse one is, that for some drivers
(2 out of 4 at our site) you also should pad the last record with the magic
end bytes instead of zeroes. Not very nice.
The second, os-independent problem is, that fonts are site specific. You
cannot really trust that the recipient has the same fonts as you. Recently
(about 6 month ago) I retrieved a paper in dvi format, which still includes
the looooong outdated msxm and msym fonts. The result was a printout with
missing characters. I asked for the TeX source code or a dvips ps file, but
did get no reply from the authors.
There are other fonts which are withdrawn now, but may survive in dvi-files
forever, like the 14 point versions of some AMS fonts.
To my experience, only TeX source code in seven bit ASCII code is really
portable. Second best is a dvips postscript file for 300dpi.
--J"org Knappen.