Subject: DVI to (Acrobat) PDF driver

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 11:22:21 CDT

Is anyone working on a DVI to PDF driver for DOS, Unix or OS/2?

PDF is the Portable Document Format, the Adobe Acrobat file format,
based on the PostScript imaging model, that is capable of representing
any PostScript page.

If we could get our TeX documents in PDF format, then we could use
one of the Acrobat viewers, like Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Exchange,
to preview our documents with all the benefits of the Acrobat technology
(e.g. font metric emulation, zooming, panning, searching, post-it-like
annotations, etc). With Adobe Exchange, we could print PDF documents
on PostScript AND EVEN on non-PostScript printers.

This, of course, assumes that Adobe Acrobat is going to take off,
which I believe it will, and that the Adobe Acrobat products are going
to be commonplace and not expensive. Today, you can get Acrobat Exchange
for Windows and the Mac for about $120, in the U.S. Acrobat Reader sells
for about $50. Acrobat Distiller, which converts PostScript to PDF,
sells for $600, but this wouldn't be needed if we had a DVI2PDF driver ;-)
Adobe says these products will run on Windows, Mac, DOS and Unix (and OS/2
I hope), in that order. Also, last week I saw a thin (~180 page) PDF specs
book published by Adobe, at a local bookstore.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on the merits of a DVI2PDF driver.
--- Ed Garay

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From: "Tomas G. Rokicki" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 10:33:08 -0700

Well, I'm planning to work on one.  Unfortunately, the font support
provided by PDF is pretty poor (only Type 1 fonts using Adobe Standard
Encoding) so it would be tricky.  There's one possible solution in
insisting that everyone have Y&Y Type 1 or BSR Type 1 fonts for the
CM fonts, but that's still somewhat pricey and disk hungry.  And also,
to include PostScript graphics (pretty much a standard, and all the
previewers I write/support directly display PostScript graphics on the
screen) you would need to essentially reinvent distiller, anyway.

tom