🚀 go-pugleaf

cameron@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Cameron Smith) writes:

>I once said I didn't want to read Volume B of the Computers
>and Typesetting series (TeX: The Program), and that I was waiting
>for the movie to come out.  Well, I take it back.  I have long
>wondered why the reference point for DVI files, instead of being
>at the upper left corner of the page, is 1 inch down and 1 inch
>in from the corner.  I finally resolved to go to the library and
>check out the source and find out.

>  the standard convention for output on normal size paper is
>  to position each page so that the upper left-hand corner is
>  exactly one inch from the left and the top

>It does not say (in that section at least) *why* this is the
>convention, or what in the DVI file (if anything) specifies this,
That is the recommendation you should adhere to if you write a DVI
driver or viewer, simply because everybody else does it that way,
because Knuth recommends it in order that everything looks the same.

It has no compelling reason other that everybody else does it that way
and that standard formats adhere to that convention.