[pdftex] pdftex deterministic?

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ Geoffrey Alan Washburn <geoffw at cis.upenn.edu>:

| Unfortunately, after some further experimentation it does not seem
| that even repeated runs of the same document produce identical
| output.

Since pdftex puts a timestamp into the output file, in order to get
identical outputs from two consecutive runs you'd need to run them
both within the same second.  Hardly likely, if you ask me.

Here's a sample time stamp:

/CreationDate (D:20061110150417+01'00')

Apart from that, however, I would expect consecutive runs to give
identical results.  If not, check and make sure the .aux file (if it's
latex you're using) doesn't change between runs.  One can construct
cases in which the presence of cross references makes the output
change on every run, but you are exceedingly unlikely to run into an
example by accident.

- Harald