> With incompatible \specials, some expertise is needed to even be able to > exchange TeX source. It's not so bad most of the time, If I have a document that goes \usepackage{hyperref,color} then I can have a hyperlinked, coloured document which will work unchanged (at the TeX level) with xdvi (hyperlinked, but monocrome) dvips/ghostscript dvips/ghostscript/distiller/acrobat pdftex/acrobat Y&Y's dviwindo previewer Y&Y's dvipsone/distiller/acrobat OzTeX previewer and probably other things as well. There are still problems relating to graphics inclusion, but that is more to do with differing functionality than with differing syntax. If one driver supports including, say, wmf (MS Windows) files, and another does not, then moving a document that includes such a graphic will involve a bit of effort and conversion, I don't see how a standardised \special syntax for that would help much. It would help me to maintain color/graphics and it would help Sebastian to maintain hyperref, but as long as somebody has put in the work to support a given \special set, it does not make much difference to the end user. David