[texworks] message from TeXworks user

[Stefan Löffler]

Hi,

Am 2010-01-20 12:06, schrieb Jan Öhman:
> If I have a text file in latex (.tex) format.
> Can I make a PDF file with a command?

I guess what you want is simply "pdflatex textfile.tex" if you run from
the command line (of course you must replace "textfile.tex" by the
actual filename).
Of course there are many options and different possibilities, but this
should be the simplest way to get you started.

Note that the program pdflatex.exe must be somewhere your operating
system can find it. Usually that is defined by the PATH variable. If
it's not in your PATH, you must locate it and specify the full path to
it. Where it is depends on your operating system, but you should be able
to find it somewhere in the directory of your TeX distribution (TeXlive,
MiKTeX, MacTeX, ...).

> or do I always open it in TexWorks for conversion to PDF?

No, you don't have to if you don't want to ;). TeXworks is just an
editor (with some nifty features) that should help you to actually write
the .tex file. If you already have it and don't want to change
anything/look at its content but just want a pdf, running the pdflatex
command above is all you need.

HTH
Stefan