General ⇒ Viewing pdf from latex

[oneplussix]

I am using Texworks on a mac. Whenever i press the green play button, I get this message:

Code: Select all

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.11 (TeX Live 2010)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./Fobonacci Numbers and Their Applications.doc.tex
! Undefined control sequence.
l.1 \documentclass
                  {article}

I am trying to view the tex file in pdf form. can anyone help me pls the methods I search on google are all useless.
thnks in advance

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

welcome to the board!

As I wrote in the topic: Input File not found in working Directory, it seems that you compile with pdfTeX, but not with pdfLaTeX. (pdf)TeX doesn't know \documentclass because it's a (pdf)LaTeX command. In TeXworks, change the typesetting engine/format to pdfLaTeX. Either do it in the main menu, Edit/ Preferences/ Typesetting and choose pdfLaTeX as the default, or choose it in the drop down list next to the green typesetting button at the top left.

Stefan

[localghost]

To avoid this in TeXworks, there are several possibilities.

• Set the typesetting engine temporarily to "pdfLaTeX" by the pull down menu in the main window of TeXworks (see attachment).
• Add % !TeX program = pdflatex as very first line to the source code of your document and TeXworks will choose "pdfLaTeX" automatically every time.
• Set "pdfLateX" as default typesetting engine in the preferences of TeXworks (see attachment).

These settings apply to all possible typesetting tools available in TeXworks, not only PDFLaTeX.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten