1982 DataDisc displays that Knuth developed everything on? Sorry you’re unhappy, but given that dvi is literally a dump of TeX’s internal results on layout positioning, it contains all the information that any other system could possibly use. Perhaps your concerns have more to do with font rendering?
Indeed -- I think it's clear dataflow's main issue is with the font rendering. The image shows subpixel antialiasing on the PDF version, and not on the DVI, so naturally they look quite different.
But that's nothing to do with DVI itself; it's entirely the responsibility of the renderer.
I find these responses baffling. I'm just an end-user. All I see is that every time I get a DVI file, I want to tear my eyes out, no matter where or when I open it. First my assessment gets questioned, then when I spend time installing software and compiling an example just to demonstrate the concrete problem upon request -- which I have no reason to believe was novel or previously unknown in any way -- I'm promptly shut down and told to respect the file format and instead blame all the viewers in existence. Great -- so what was/am I supposed to do with this information? Are my eyes supposed to see the file clearly now that the blame got assigned somewhere? Or am I supposed to write my own DVI viewer tomorrow afternoon? How is this intended to be helpful?
It's not helpful if you're expecting to be handed polished products that do what you want. It is helpful if you want to understand what's going on. I think it would be interesting to get a high quality DVI viewer based on modern graphics tech, but of course such a thing will take time and effort. I plan to meet with Dr. Fuchs in the next few weeks to talk about this and related issues.
It’s not helpful if what you’re interested in is a DVI viewer that gives just as smooth user experience as well as, say, Preview, Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader. Because that doesn’t currently exist. But it’s useful if you want to understand why the DVI format was invented and why there’s a difference between viewing DVI and PDF files.
