[pdftex] basic for Pdftex

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Wed Mar 16 23:33:22 CET 2011


arun ganesh <arun_taurean at live.com> wrote:

> I'm a beginner.I'm working on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid).Actully i have to work
> on Pdflatex/ pdftex. I googled but wasn't able to find a good tutorial.Can
> u send me the links where they have all the basics for handling pdftex??

it would be interesting to learn how you came to this point.  you "have"
to work on pdf(la)tex, but you don't say why.  i could imagine any
number of possible reasons, but it would surely be easy to lead you
seriously astray if we don't learn what you want to do.

> And also is Pdftex/pdflatex an editor or compiler????

nearer a compiler, but not even that, really.  pdf(la)tex takes a
marked-up document, and executes the macros in it, while typesetting the
whole thing.

so, in a sense it _is_ a compiler, but not in the usual computer science
sense.

the typesetting aspect is the essence of the thing.

robin fairbairns

see also www.tex.ac.uk/faq


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