General ⇒ TeX

[muath]

Please, what is the deferent between TeX, LaTeX, pdfLaTeX, and so on?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

• TeX is the typesetting engine, other variants like LaTeX base on it. You could use TeX directly, but it's hard and looks more like programming. The output has DVI format.
• LaTeX is a widely used extension of TeX. It introduces classes and packages and a lot of macros making using TeX easier. It uses TeX internally and the output has DVI format.
• pdfTeX works like TeX but directly produces PDF output instead of DVI.
• pdfLaTeX works like LaTeX but produces PDF instead of DVI.

Today many users work with pdfLaTeX.

Stefan