2.3 DVI File
TeX (and subsequently LaTeX) originally created DVI (DeVice Independent) files instead of PDF files.2.3 However, although there are free DVI viewers, not many
people have them installed, so it's really only TeX users who
can read them. Also, you can't embed image files in a DVI file or
have fancy effects, such as rotation. Instead, people can use
TeX/LaTeX to create
a DVI file and then use an application to convert the DVI file to
PostScript.
These days PDF is the preferred platform-independent format, and
with the advent of PDFTeX, modern TeX/LaTeX users can
directly create PDF documents rather than going through the DVI
route. Some people still prefer to create DVI files as an
intermediate step, particularly if they want to embed PostScript
instructions (as is done by the pstricks package). For
simplicity, this book assumes that you have a modern TeX distribution and are using PDFLaTeX rather than LaTeX⇒DVI.
Footnotes
- ... files.2.3
- There was no PDF back then.
This book is also available as A4 PDF or 12.8cm x 9.6cm PDF or paperback (ISBN 978-1-909440-00-5).