[texhax] latex vs. pdflatex

[Robin Fairbairns]

Haruhiko Okumura writes:

> OT, but we Japanese have to live with dvi->pdf because there's no
> multibyte extension to pdfTeX but a good one to dvipdfm:
> 
> http://project.ktug.or.kr/dvipdfmx/

i don't believe it _is_ off-topic.  omega has moved _so_ slowly, that
we're still faced with their assertion that a pdf-omega is "for future
study".  i suspect all of us would be using it, were it available.
very depressing.

i'm told regular dvipdfm deals with odvi files, but all power to the
arm of the dvipdfmx people, i say.  true to the tex tradition of
making do.

> I can't find any quality degradation compared with another path from
> dvi to PDF: dvips + (ps2pdf or Distiller).  Distiller tends to produce
> smaller PDFs, though.

dvipdfm is a good program, no-one would deny that.