Talk:Device independent file format

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Device independent file format was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. Reviewed version: February 19, 2007

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I didn't bother to move this from DVI, it needs a reference or something:

A lack of easy-to-use DVI software on microcomputers may be one of the reasons TeX did not compete against systems such as Adobe Acrobat.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by ( (talk • contribs) 15:57, 15 March 2003.

I'm not even sure it's true. Maybe it just needs a lot of qualifications. Note that a lot of people using TeX today (esp. on Windows) use it by generating a PDF and viewing the output in Acrobat Reader. (Of course, I don't think TeX was ever "competing" with Acrobat: they do different things.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.16.250.66 (talk) 07:29, 19 September 2004

I don't think TeX was ever "competing" with Acrobat: they do different things.

In particular, Acrobat is more "portable" in the sense that the fonts are (usually) embedded. With a DVI file, there can be problems when attempting to view on another system having fonts with the same name but different metrics. So, I agree that DVI never really competed against Acrobat (apples and quinces). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.107.220.141 (talk) 18:32, 19 August 2005

It says on the page that Donald Knuth was the designer. This is completely wrong -- it was in fact designed by David Fuchs in 1979 (see dvitype.web). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.240.70.73 (talk) 11:26, 15 March 2006

I'd fixed this before reading the talk page, but the next time you notice a mistake, feel free to correct it without waiting for permission. grendel|khan 19:08, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Licenses of many fonts available in TeX distributions don't allow any modifications without changing the name of the file, so metrics should be the same. Example from cmr10.mf:

% THIS IS THE OFFICIAL COMPUTER MODERN SOURCE FILE cmr10.mf BY D E KNUTH.
% IT MUST NOT BE MODIFIED IN ANY WAY UNLESS THE FILE NAME IS CHANGED!

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.239.31.186 (talk) 2006-12-30T14:07:59

[edit] GA nomination failed

I have failed the article according to the GA criteria. The article is not broad enough, with only two sections of information. If you can, add a picture or two with the appropriate licenses, perhaps one you've taken yourself. The article also needs a lot more references. Include inline citations to increase the verifiability of the article. Once these issues are addressed, among the other criteria, please consider resubmitting again for GAC. --Nehrams2020 17:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The lion

Does anyone know the significance of the lion? And if so would they be so good as to add that information to the article? I see it crops up in numerous packages, including the KDE desktop icon for DVI files, the xdvi viewer program, the Kile editor, etc. Thanks! --Bigdaddyedward 14:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

It's the TeX mascot.--Oneiros 14:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)