pdfTeX is an extension of TeX which can produce PDF directly from TeX source, as well as original DVI files. pdfTeX incorporates the e-TeX extensions. pdfTeX also has a variety of other extensions, perhaps most notably for microtypography line breaking features.

The computer program pdfTeX is an extension of Knuth 's typesetting program TeX, and was originally written and developed into a publicly usable product by Hàn Thế Thành as a part of the work for his PhD thesis at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.

The main purpose of the pdfTEX project is to create and maintain an extension of TEX that can produce PDF output directly from TEX source files and improve/enhance the result of TEX typesetting with the help of PDF output. When PDF output is not selected, pdfTEX produces standard DVI output.

When you install a LaTeX distribution on your system today, it actually comes with two different programs: tex, and pdftex. It also comes with another two programs on top of these: latex and pdflatex, but these are actually just wrappers around tex and pdftex respectively.

Jul 8, 2022 · pdflatex.exe is part of a whole suite of software called a TeX Distribution. You can't just download the executable. There are two main distributions available for Windows: TeX Live and MikTeX. Both are very good.

Jul 28, 2023 · An extension of TeX which can be configured to directly generate PDF documents instead of DVI. All current free TeX distributions including TeX Live, MacTeX and MiKTeX include pdfTeX (Plain TeX) and pdfLaTeX (LaTeX). ConTeXt was originally designed around use of pdfTeX, though nowadays it is focused on LuaTeX).

The main purpose of the pdfTEX project is to create and maintain an extension of TEX that can produce pdf directly from TEX source files and improve/enhance the result of TEX typesetting with the help of pdf.

3 days ago · pdfTeX is an extended version of eTeX that can create PDF directly from TeX source files and enhance the result of TeX typesetting with the help of PDF. When PDF output is not selected, pdfTeX produces normal DVI output, otherwise it produces PDF output that looks essentially identical to the DVI output

An extension of TX which can directly generate PDF documents as well as DVI output. All current free TX distributions including TX Live, Mac TX and MiK TX include pdf TX (Plain TX) and pdf LaTX (LaTX), among many other formats based on the pdf TX engine.

Inverse search is a bit easier with latex. And dvi compilation & preview is much faster. But SyncTeX shows promise for awesome pdftex inverse and forward search. If you don't use postscript stuff and care about creating high quality PDFs then pdflatex is preffered.