PdfTeX

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The correct title of this article is pdfTeX. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

pdfTeX

Developer:	Martin Schröder
Latest release:	1.40.3 / 2007-02-04
OS:	Multiplatform
Use:	Typesetting
License:	GNU General Public License
Website:	www.pdftex.org

pdfTeX is a variant of the TeX typesetting program originally written by Hàn Thế Thành. The main difference between TeX and pdfTeX is that whereas TeX outputs DVI files, pdfTeX outputs PDF files directly. This allows tight integration of PDF features such as hypertext links and tables of contents, using packages such as hyperref. On the other hand, packages exploiting the usual conversion chain of DVI-to-PostScript such as PSTricks may fail, although replacements such as pdftricks have been written.

It is possible to obtain DVI output from pdfTeX. This DVI output should be identical to that of TeX, unless pdfTeX's extra microtypography features have been activated. Moreover, since LaTeX, ConTeXt et al. are simply macro packages for TeX, they work equally well with pdfTeX. Hence, pdflatex, for example, calls the pdfTeX program using the standard LaTeX macros to typeset LaTeX documents, whereas it is the default rendering engine for ConTeXt documents.

[edit] Features

pdfTeX has several features not available in standard TeX:

Native TrueType and Type 1 font embedding
Micro-typographic extensions such as margin kerning using font expansion
Direct access to pdf specific features such as hyperlinks, tables of contents and document information