Master/texmf-doc/doc/english/FAQ-en/html/FAQ-whatpdftex.html


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<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label whatpdftex</title>
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<h3>What is PDFTeX?</h3>
<p/>PDFTeX has entered the main stream of TeX distributions: most
LaTeX and ConTeXt users nowadays use PDFTeX whether they know
it or not (more precisely, they use an amalgam of PDFTeX and
<a href="FAQ-etex.html">e-TeX</a>).  So what is PDFTeX?
<p/>PDFTeX is a development of TeX that is capable of generating
typeset PDF output in place of DVI.  PDFTeX has
other capabilities, most notably in the area of fine typographic
detail (for example, its support for 
  <a href="FAQ-overfull.html">optimising line breaks</a>),

but its greatest impact to date has been in the area of
PDF output.
<p/>PDFTeX started as a topic for H&agrave;n The Th&agrave;nh&rsquo;s Master&rsquo;s thesis,
and seems first to have been published in <i>TUGboat</i> 18(4), in 1997
(though it was certainly discussed at the TUG&rsquo;96 conference in
Russia).
<p/>While the world was making good use of &ldquo;pre-releases&rdquo; of PDFTeX,
Th&agrave;nh used it as a test-bed for the micro-typography which was the
prime subject of his Ph.D. research.  Since Th&agrave;nh was finally
awarded his Ph.D., day-to-day maintenance and development of
PDFTeX 1.0 (and later) has been in the hands of a group of
PDFTeX maintainers (which includes Th&agrave;nh); the group has managed
to maintain a stable platform for general use.
<p/>Development of PDFTeX has (in essence) stopped: the brave new world
is to be <a href="FAQ-luatex.html">LuaTeX</a>.
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=whatpdftex">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=whatpdftex</a>
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