Editing Device independent file format (section)

== DVI related software ==
DVI files are often converted into PDF, PostScript, or [[Printer Command Language|PCL]] format for reading and printing. They can be also viewed directly by using DVI viewers.
* DVI viewers: [[Yet Another Previewer|YAP]] (included in [[MiKTeX]]), [[xdvi]], [http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/obsolete/systems/win32/fptex/ windvi], [[Evince]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20070822025647/http://developer.kde.org/~kdvi/ KDVI], [[Okular]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20071011112523/http://akagi.ms.u-tokyo.ac.jp/dviout-ftp.html dviout], [https://web.archive.org/web/20070821015331/http://dviwin.keystone.gr/ dviwin], DView (included in the commercial BaKoMa TeX distribution), [http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/dviware/javadvi/ javaDVI], [http://mdvi.sourceforge.net/ MDVI], and DVIWindo (of the now defunct commercial Y&Y TeX, which has been open-sourced).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tug.org/yandy/dviwindo.htm|title=Y&Y Inc. -- DVIWindo|website=www.tug.org}}</ref>
* DVI to human-readable format: {{proper name|dvitype}} (disassembler of sorts)
* DVI-to-PDF converters: {{proper name|dvipdf}}, {{proper name|dvipdfm}}, {{proper name|dvipdfmx}}
* DVI-to-PS converters: [[dvips]] is the de facto standard. [[CTAN]] includes some older ones like {{proper name|dvitops}} (and DVIPSONE<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tug.org/yandy/dvipsone.htm|title=Y&Y Inc. -- DVIPSONE|website=www.tug.org}}</ref>) with a note that they lost their market share a long time ago.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ctan.org/tex-archive/dviware/dvitops|title=CTAN: /tex-archive/dviware/dvitops|website=ctan.org}}</ref>
* DVI-to-bitmap converters: [[dvipng]] (generates GIF or PNG), or use [[dvips]] and [[Ghostscript]]
* DVI-to-SVG converters: [http://dvisvg.sourceforge.net/ dvisvg],<ref name="gc2"/>{{rp|13}} [https://dvisvgm.de dvisvgm],<ref name="gc2"/>{{rp|13}} dvi2svg;<ref name="gc2"/>{{rp|13}}<ref>https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-2/tb87frischauf.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=March 2022}}</ref> {{as of|2014}} the only one included in [[CTAN]] and actively maintained is {{proper name|dvisvgm}}.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ctan.org/tex-archive/dviware/|title=CTAN: /tex-archive/dviware|website=ctan.org}}</ref>

The first DVI previewers capable of on-screen previewing and modification of LaTeX documents ran on [[Amiga]]s.<ref>In 1986 [[Tomas Rokicki]] printed his first page with dvisw, an early DVI printer driver for the Amiga, on a [[Minolta-QMS|QMS]] [[SmartWriter]] using [[AmigaTeX]] by [[Radical Eye Software]]. A link to a relic info about milestones of LaTeX history is available [http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/feb98/0307.html at this external site].</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Rokicki |first=Tomas |date=April 1988 |title=The Commodore Amiga: A Magic TeX Machine |journal=[[TUGboat]] |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=40–41 |url=http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb09-1/tb20site.pdf |access-date=2010-11-19 }}</ref>

=== DVI-to-PDF converters ===
'''dvipdf''' is a tool to translate DVI files (generated by [[TeX]]) to [[PDF]] files. In current Linux distributions like [[Ubuntu (operating system)|Ubuntu]], it is a thin wrapper around dvips and [[Ghostscript]], and copyrighted to Artifex Software (the makers of Ghostscript).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/intrepid/man1/dvipdf.1.html |title=Ubuntu Manpage: Dvipdf - Convert TeX DVI file to PDF using ghostscript and dvips |access-date=2014-08-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150909224433/http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/intrepid/man1/dvipdf.1.html |archive-date=2015-09-09 }}</ref> A possibly different program with the same name—described as a modified version of dvips—was announced in the late 1990s by Sergey Lesenko,<ref>https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb17-3/tb52lese.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=March 2022}}</ref><ref>https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb18-3/tb56lese.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=March 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://tex.loria.fr/general/eurotex98/eurotex98-lesenko.ps.gz | title=(La)TeX Navigator }}</ref> however it was apparently [[vaporware|never released]].<ref name="KopkaDaly2003">{{cite book|author1=Helmut Kopka|author2=Patrick W. Daly|title=Guide to LaTeX|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BTPgB6dzhG4C&pg=PT364|date=February 2008|orig-year=2004|publisher=Pearson Education|isbn=978-0-321-17385-0|at=§ 13.2.2 the dvipdfm driver|edition=4th; 9th printing}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://compgroups.net/comp.text.tex/where-art-dvipdf/1912300|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140811072544/http://compgroups.net/comp.text.tex/where-art-dvipdf/1912300|url-status=usurped|archive-date=August 11, 2014|title=Where art dvipdf? - comp.text.tex|website=compgroups.net}}</ref>

'''dvipdfm''' is a DVI-to-PDF translator developed by Mark A. Wicks. The early documentation of dvipdfm specifically mentions the limited availability of Lesenko's dvipdf as a reason for creating dvipdfm.<ref>Mark A. Wicks, [http://gaspra.kettering.edu/dvipdfm/dvipdfm-0.12.4.pdf Dvipdfm User’s Manual] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150706063108/http://gaspra.kettering.edu/dvipdfm/dvipdfm-0.12.4.pdf |date=2015-07-06 }}, Version 0.12.4 September 19, 1999, page 2</ref> dvipdfm supports most of the newer special functions of the PDF format, including [[bookmark]]s, [[annotation]]s, [[thumbnails]], and dvips specials—a feature making possible the inclusion of [[Encapsulated PostScript]] (.eps) files like [[METAPOST]] output—as well inclusion of [[JPEG]] and [[Portable Network Graphics|PNG]] images; other features of dvipdfm include partial [[font embedding]] (reducing file size) and balancing the internal PDF document trees to speed up rendering of large documents.<ref name="gc2"/>{{rp|798}} Many of these features (except for the direct support for .eps files<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.texfaq.org/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=dvipdfmgraphics|title=texfaq2html redirect emulating cgi-bin lookup on the original site|website=www.texfaq.org}}</ref>) are also present in [[pdfTeX]], which typesets TeX directly to PDF. The 2004, 4th edition of the ''Guide to LaTeX'' compares them in the following way:<ref name="KopkaDaly2003b">{{cite book|author1=Helmut Kopka|author2=Patrick W. Daly|title=Guide to LaTeX|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BTPgB6dzhG4C&pg=PT366|date=February 2008|orig-year=2004|publisher=Pearson Education|isbn=978-0-321-17385-0|at=§ 13.2.3 The pdfTEX program|edition=4th; 9th printing}}</ref>

{{blockquote|The dvipdfm program is in the original spirit of TEX, that uses DVI as a universal intermediate format for all outputs. Purists might tend to respect this ideal. After all, no one ever considered rewriting TEX to produce PostScript output directly. That said, one must consider that TEX was invented in the days when no one printer specification dominated the field. Today, PDF is much more than a printer format; it is the means of representing documents electronically. That alone would not justify preferring pdfTEX over a DVI-to-PDF converter, nor would the fact that it saves a processing step; the deciding argument is that pdfTEX has established itself as reliable, robust, and flexible. In the end, it is likely a question of which program one is more comfortable with, and which one has given the better results for the particular user.}}

'''dvipdfmx''' is an extended version of the dvipdfm DVI-to-PDF translator, included in current TeX distributions like [[TeX Live]] 2014<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://packages.debian.org/sid/texlive-base|title=Debian -- Details of package texlive-base in sid|website=packages.debian.org}}</ref> and [[MiKTeX]] 2.9.<ref name="miktex-list">{{Cite web|url=https://miktex.org/pkg/az|title=MiKTeX Packages A-Z|website=miktex.org}}</ref> The primary goal of the dvipdfmx project is to support multi-byte character encodings and [[CJK characters|CJK]] character sets for East Asian languages.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://project.ktug.org/dvipdfmx/|title=The DVIPDFMx Project|website=project.ktug.org}}</ref> dvipdfmx is also included (in a somewhat modified form) in [[XeTeX]].<ref name="gc2"/>{{rp|798}}

The 2nd, 2008 edition of the ''LaTeX Graphics Companion'' makes the following workflow suggestion:<ref name="gc2"/>{{rp|803}}

{{blockquote|text=The route that you should follow depends mostly on the graphics material that you want to include. If most of it is in EPS format, the easiest way is to use latex, followed by dvips and finally [[ps2pdf]]. If all of your graphics files are already in PDF format, with some JPEG and PNG images, the more direct route is to run pdflatex. You can also combine both approaches by running latex and the dvipdfmx program. If you make a lot of use of [[PSTricks]], you should look at [...] the pst-pdf package.}}