On Mon, Dec 14, 1998 at 07:19:17PM +0100, Hans Aberg wrote: > >It's madness, in my view, to modify the TeX engine > >in order to allow inclusion of particular graphic formats. > > What modifications do they do in pdfTeX? 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 @# {data structure of images; for |pdf_image_node| and |pdf_ref_form_node| the identifier of XObject will be store in |obj_info| of coresponding object in |obj_tab|} @d pdf_image_node_size == 5 {size of whatsit node for image} @d pdf_image_info(#) == mem[# + 4].int {pointer to hold data structures in external \.{libpng} library} @d obj_image_ptr == obj_aux {pointer to image structure} 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. > >While Thanh's pdfTeX is a marvellous piece of work, > >which satisfied an urgent need, > >in my view it is fundamentally misconceived, > >and will in time be replaced by a version based on possibly extended DVI. > > But will an extended DVI suffice as a new byte-code for WWW publishing? 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. I would expect browsers to define something like a Java interface, with the understanding that they will display anything which implements this interface. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail: [log in to unmask] tel: +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland