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Date:      Tue, 16 Apr 2019 20:50:18 +0200
From:      Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To:        Valeri Galtsev <galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: latex on fbsd
Message-ID:  <20190416205018.2454922d.freebsd@edvax.de>
In-Reply-To: <dd40df79-d7d1-966f-ad62-c6c7f16c6b1d@kicp.uchicago.edu>
References:  <7c7b8992-053a-b22f-da45-b6cfaf3b753b@dreamchaser.org> <20190416132727.7af30132.freebsd@edvax.de> <d4c53e2a-2063-c39b-9946-0e2305a927d4@dreamchaser.org> <dd40df79-d7d1-966f-ad62-c6c7f16c6b1d@kicp.uchicago.edu>

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On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 10:30:48 -0500, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> 
> 
> On 4/16/19 9:58 AM, Gary Aitken wrote:
> > On 4/16/19 5:27 AM, Polytropon wrote:
> > 
> >> Depending on the kind and scope of your work, using "plain
> >> LaTeX" with your editor of choice, and then simply running
> >> the command "pdflatex filename.tex", could be the easiest
> >> thing - less overhead, less distraction, less stuff to manually
> >> adjust in the GUI. (I'm saying this as a person who does
> >> 99 % of all paperwork in "plain LaTeX", with the special
> >> case where LaTeX is generated automatically from special
> >> tools.)
> > 
> > Thanks, pdflatex is what I needed to know.
> 
> Just to mention one thing: in TeX there are two mutually exclusive ways 
> to insert pictures in the document:
> 
> 1. in image (jpeg, png,...) or pdf format.
> 
> 2. in eps format.

The big difference in usage is that case 1 is the common way
for "everyday use" and "business documents", and case 2 is
often used in DTP up to the pre-print stage. This is because
printing often requires you to supply vector formats that
they can render and print to a specific resolution - and
EPS (as well as DVI) are device-independent formats that
do not convey a specific "raster size".



> [...] EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format is pretty 
> much the same as postscript format, only it lacks finalizing page 
> commands that will be added when the whole thing together with other 
> content is put on particular page. To typeset document in this case you use
> 
> latex
> 
> command which produces .dvi file which you can view, or can convert to 
> postscript file with dvips command, or to pdf using dvipdf command 
> (which comes with ghostscript package).

Of course you can postprocess that output. A typical chain
would be tex -> dvi -> ps -> pdf. But in many cases, printers
can process the PS just fine, so using the "dvips" command
(with the appropriate options) and sending its output to the
printer will do the job.

Historically, PS is _the_ format for printed output. Every
program that prints something emits PS. The printer subsystem
of the OS uses processes it with a printer filter (if needed)
and sends the result to the printer's interface. Sending the
print output to a file therefore gave you a PS file that you
could examine.



> Incidentally, TeX was created as programming language to program 
> typesetting machines. Do people remember such things as typesetting 
> machines?

LaTeX (as a whole) is a toolset to do typesetting (in its
modern sense), whereas WYSIWYG office applications do not
do typesetting. They do word processing.

On the "ladder of evolution", typesetting is of course
superior to word processing. You can easily see this by
comparing the look of properly typeset documents with what
common offlice applications will spit out. :-)



> Postscript, BTW, was created as programming language to "draw" whatever 
> is necessary on the printed page and is my life saver in case of 
> postscript capable printers.

You can of course write PS programs and feed them into
the printer, and the printer will execute the programs
(if it is _capable_ of processing PS) so that a specific
output will be printed. When PS is used to output raster
graphics (converted from a DVI format, for example), the
PS doesn't do much more than "put a pixel here, put a
pixel there", but PS as such (!) can do great things
with graphics and fonts.

PS is additionally used in PPD - "PostScript Printer
Description" -, a format where a PS file will describe
printer capabilities and make them addressable for the
printer subsystem, maybe comparable a printer filter.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...



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