General ⇒ How to make .pdf from .tex ?

[shokin]

Hello everybody,

Now I am learning how to make a .tex document, and how to use the terminal (console). I would like to verify whether the following commands match with the following effects (in the terminal) :

If I have a file test1.tex :

atex test1.tex : creates a file test1.dvi from the file test1.tex
xdvi test1.dvi : reads the file test1.dvi
dvips test1.dvi : prints the file test1.dvi
dvips test1.dvi -o : creates a file test1.ps from the file test1.dvi
ps2pdf test1.ps : creates a file test1.pdf from the file test1.ps
pdflatex test1.tex : creates a file test1.pdf from the file test1.dvi
xpdf test1.pdf : reads the file test1.pdf

I feel like I mixed everything. Could you correct it if it is wrong ?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Some corrections and additions

Compiling TeX:
tex test1.tex : converts a TeX file to DVI (probably you don't need that, if you mean LaTeX)
pdftex test1.tex : converts a TeX file to PDF (probably you don't need that either)
latex test1.tex : converts a LaTeX file to DVI
pdflatex test1.tex : converts a LaTeX file to PDF

Converting:
dvips test1.dvi : converts a DVI file to PostScript
ps2pdf test1.ps : converts a PostScript file to PDF
dvipdfmx xtest1.dvi : converts a DVI file to PDF (similar: dvipdf, dvipdfm)

Viewing:
xdvi test1.dvi, xpdf test1.pdf, gv test1.ps, ...

I guess most commonly used are pdflatex and latex+dvips+ps2pdf if PostScript is used (EPS images, PSTricks). There are other engines, such as xetex and luatex, the LaTeX versions are xelatex and lualatex.

All commands understand options for specific settings - try for example: pdftex --help.

Stefan

[shokin]

Hello, Stefan_K,

Thank you for your answers. I've corrected it.

Just an information : last week I moved to Trisquel 6.0 .