A Device Independent DVI Interpreter Library for Various Output Devices

In this paper, we describe DVIlib, which is a device independent DVI interpreter library written in C developed by the author. Since DVIlib is completely independent from specific output devices, new printer drivers and previewers (DVIware) can be easily developed. DVIlib is a set of functions to read and render DVI files. To render a page, DVIlib generates a bitmap for each character in a page and call a callback function to draw a bitmap on a device. Therefore, what a programmer must do to make a new DVIware is to write device dependent routines (initialization and drawing a bitmap on a device). Since DVIlib adopts VFlib as a font module, many font file formats are available, including PK, GF, VF, and Type 1. Thus, any DVIware that adopts DVIlib supports many font file formats. We developed a program to convert from DVI to bitmap, printer drivers, and previewers for X Window System. These programs are easily developed by adopting DVIlib.