Re: Example ConTeXt document: PS output

[Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com>]

Hi,

On 07/10/2010 07:46 AM, Michael Talbot-Wilson wrote:
>
> Running I think any browser on any Linux system, if I see a PDF file
> on the Web and click on print, and then print to a file, I
> automatically finish up with a .ps file. Which I can display with gv.
> The PDF format was all the time redundant.

I can print that file directly from the pdf reader in that case
(and I have a fairly standard PostScript printer), so from my
point of view it is .ps that is the redundant format.

> And even I prefer to avoid unnecessary conversions of image formats
> when I only want to print images. Using Photoshop I save as EPS,
> switch to Linux, run eplain, print a PostScript image (and text) on a
> PostScript printer, and that's the end of it.

Not that I want to criticize you workflow, if it works for you, that it
is fine and there is no need to change it. But you could have saved as
PNG, JPG, or PDF instead, and there would not be a need for conversion.

> I would like the high-level conveniences of ConTeXt, the ones I
> mentioned, but they don't supersede the rest.
>
> The luatex manpage in luatex-beta-0.60.2.tar.bz2 says:
>
> "In DVI mode, luaTeX can be used as a complete replacement for the
> TeX engine."

In DVI mode, luatex can be used to replace TeX, yes. But in that
case, you loose some important new features, because they are not
supported by DVI format (opentype fonts, unicode support). For
that reason, Hans decided not to support DVI mode for luatex
in context MkIV.

<side note>
Talking as a luatex developer: If you want something better than what
you have, you will have to be prepared to make some changes yourself as
well. Life is too short for us freeware developers to keep supporting
all existing setups on top of trying to improve things. Writing
extensions to the DVI format (and all its processing tools) seemed
like a waste of my time to me especially since everything we wanted
to do in luatex is supported by PDF.
</side note>

You can, however, use context MkII ('texexec') which uses pdftex,
and still have some of your wishes by making it output DVI files:

   texexec --backend=dvi ...

I don't recall whether texexec calls dvips automatically, you
probably have to do that manually.

You won't be able to use OpenType fonts in that case and Unicode
support will be somewhat dodgy, but you will still get the tight
document-level integration with metapost that is always provided
in context.

Best wishes,
Taco
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