Re: images, notations, backends

Subject: Re: images, notations, backends
From: Adam Di Carlo <adam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 22 Dec 1999 12:50:22 -0500
Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> This is not really true. If you produce a dvi file, it simply has
> reference to a graphic file, which the dvi-to-whatever processors
> needs to expand. which formats are supported depends on the dvi
> processor, therefore.  pdfTeX is more limited, as it _does_ include
> the graphic up front, but even so the current version can handle JPEG, 
> PNG, TIFF and PDF.
>
> Getting dvips to grok eg .gif files is not that hard. I appreciate
> your discussion, but in this context I am not convinced its really needed.

Maybe not.... 

My assumption is that we are using standard environments.

The question I have, more theoretically stated, is the following:

For real-world SGML processing, you need a SGML formatting system for
converting SGML to different formats, and a build system, to control
the invocation of the processors.  The conversion of SGML to different
formats involves "backend" systems.  Different backend systems have
different capabilities -- my specific issue here is that different
backends have different image formats they know about.

Either the build system should know about the image formats handled by
the backend in question, and how to convert; or else the processor
itself (taken as a whole, in this case, both Jade and JadeTeX, for
instance) should know how to do conversations.

In the latter case, either the processor backend system should know on
it's own how to convert (Sebastian's suggestion), or else it's
possible that the NOTATION system was meant for this purpose.

Right now, the reality is that the build system needs to know about
the backends' supported images.  I am fine with that but just wanted
to know what the SGML elite think about the issue.

-- 
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>


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