Ted wrote

 > Acrobat Distiller will turn a .ps into a .pdf,
 > although I can't imagine why anyone would post a
 > .ps file since it would tend to be huge, and it's
 > 'distilled' .pdf tends to be tiny, and includes all
 > of the info in the .ps.

One young academic called Rokicki was stirred to
*absolute belief* by 1985 PostScript.  He invented a
PS dialect that was compact as well (once gz compressed).
To this day, for printing academic TeX typescripts, it is
the most compact self-contained format, typically 1/3 of
PDF. It used a (malaise!)*bitmapped* type3 font format
compression that linked well with Knuth's MetaFont.

Politically correct academics in the period of ancient 
history reaching from 1985 to 1995 used Rokicki's 
**free** converter dvips almost exclusively.

That was all very fine.  But it rankled a bit that
Adobe's money earner was *vectorial fonts* not
bitmapped fonts.  So naturally AcroReader 
gave piss awfull service to bitmapped fonts
and plush luxury service to Adobe's vectorial fonts.

Kicker: Rokicki's PS format is not routinely convertible
to anything vectorial.

Exeunt academics.

Larry (ever skeptical)

"Is this message d'eja vu? 
 It's composed of 100% recycled electrons"