[texhax] dvi vs pdf

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Pierre MacKay wrote:

> Hear Hear!!!
>
> I think I make about 50 passes through DVI for each article I prepare
> for the journals I set. Many of them are at the last stage---page
> balancing---which often depends on adjustments as much as five pages
> earlier than the bad page break I am correcting.
> \stretchnextspread{<skip amount>} or \shrinknextspread{skip} or even
> \stretch(shrink)doublespread{} can correct problems many pages ahead,
> but none of these is likely to work on the first attempt. (I have not
> even mentioned \looseness, which someone condemned about a year ago as
> useless. I could not live without it.) Of course, if there is no need
> for balanced spreads, or verso-recto baseline alignment, none of these
> refinements is needed, and these many passes through DVI can be avoided,
> but no press I work with would accept feathering or ragged bottom
> spreads unless I could show that there was ABSOLUTELY no alternative. So
> far, that (ragged bottom---NO feathering) has happened only once in
> twenty years of journal setting.

Pierre, you are one of the Great Men of TeX, and I treat everything
you say as second only to Don.  But I can see nothing in the above
that is predicated on DVI.  Why would PDF not suffice for this most-
important-but-routine task that you undertake ?

** Phil.