# PdfTeX

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{{Short description|Extension of Knuth's typesetting program TeX}}
{{Lowercase title}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2025}}
{{Infobox software
| name = pdfTeX
| screenshot = 
| caption = 
| author = Hàn Thế Thành
| developer = The pdfTeX team
| latest release version = 1.40.29
| latest release date = March 3, 2026
| latest preview version = 
| latest preview date = <!-- {{Start date and be |YYYY|MM|DD}} -->
| genre = Typesetting
| license = [GNU General Public License](/source/GNU_General_Public_License)
| website = {{URL|https://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/}}
| operating_system = Multiplatform
}}
The [computer program](/source/computer_program) '''pdfTeX''', sometimes typeset as '''{{TeX wordmark|pdftex}}''', is an extension of [Knuth](/source/Donald_Knuth)'s  typesetting program [TeX](/source/TeX), and was originally written and developed into a publicly usable product by {{ill|Hàn Thế Thành|de}} as a part of the work for his PhD thesis at the Faculty of Informatics, [Masaryk University](/source/Masaryk_University), [Brno](/source/Brno), [Czech Republic](/source/Czech_Republic). The idea of making this extension to TeX was conceived during the early 1990s, when [Jiří Zlatuška](/source/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Zlatu%C5%A1ka) and [Phil Taylor](/source/Philip_Taylor_(computer_scientist)) discussed some developmental ideas with [Donald Knuth](/source/Donald_Knuth) at [Stanford University](/source/Stanford_University). Knuth later met Hàn Thế Thành in Brno during his visit to the Faculty of Informatics to receive an honorary doctorate from Masaryk University.

Two prominent characteristics of pdfTeX are character protrusion, which generalizes the concept of [hanging punctuation](/source/hanging_punctuation), and font expansion, an implementation of [Hermann Zapf](/source/Hermann_Zapf)'s ideas for improving the grayness of a typeset page. Both extend the core paragraph breaking routine. They are discussed in Thành's PhD thesis.<ref>{{Cite web |date=October 2000 |title=Micro-typographic extensions to the TEX typesetting system |url=https://www.pragma-ade.com/pdftex/thesis.pdf |access-date=2025-01-09 |website=pragma-ade.com}}</ref>

pdfTeX is included in most modern distributions of [LaTeX](/source/LaTeX) and [ConTeXt](/source/ConTeXt)  (including [TeX Live](/source/TeX_Live), [MacTeX](/source/MacTeX), and [MiKTeX](/source/MiKTeX))<ref>[https://archive.today/20130904030834/http://web.archive.org/web/20010124043000/http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/pdftex.html "TeX catalogue online"]. Archived from [https://pdfguru.com/word-to-pdf the original] on 2013-09-04. Retrieved 2007-09-12.</ref> and used as the default TeX engine.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Documentation - TeX Live - TeX Users Group|url=https://www.tug.org/texlive/doc.html|access-date=2020-11-14|website=www.tug.org}}</ref><ref>[http://dojo.miktex.org/blogs/christian_schenk/archive/2006/05/16/488.aspx Christian Schenk : MiKTeX 2.5: pdfetex becomes default engine]. ''dojo.miktex.org''. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070907131815/http://dojo.miktex.org/blogs/christian_schenk/archive/2006/05/16/488.aspx|date=2007-09-07}}</ref>  The main difference between TeX and pdfTeX is that whereas TeX outputs [DVI](/source/Device_independent_file_format) files, pdfTeX can output [PDF](/source/Portable_Document_Format) files directly. This allows tight integration of PDF features such as [hypertext](/source/hypertext) links and tables of contents, using packages such as <code>hyperref</code>. On the other hand, packages (such as [PSTricks](/source/PSTricks)) which exploit the earlier conversion process of DVI-to-[PostScript](/source/PostScript) may fail, although replacements such as [PGF/TikZ](/source/PGF%2FTikZ) have been written.  Direct embedding of PostScript graphics is no longer functional, and one has to use a program such as eps2pdf to convert EPS files to PDF, which can then be directly inserted by pdfTeX.

It is possible to obtain DVI output from pdfTeX. This DVI output should be identical to that of TeX, unless pdfTeX's extra [microtypography](/source/microtypography) features have been activated. Moreover, since LaTeX, ConTeXt ''et al.'' are simply [macro](/source/Macro_(computer_science)) packages for TeX, they work equally well with pdfTeX. Hence, <code>pdflatex</code>, for example, calls the pdfTeX program using the standard LaTeX macros to typeset LaTeX documents, whereas it was the default rendering engine for ConTeXt documents. Current versions of ConTeXt use
LuaMetaTeX as default rendering engine.<ref>{{cite web |
url=https://github.com/contextgarden/luametatex/blob/main/README.adoc|
title=LuaMetaTeX - README |
work=GitHub |
access-date=2024-08-18
}}</ref>
== Features ==
pdfTeX has several features not available in standard TeX:
* Native [TrueType](/source/TrueType) and [Type 1 font](/source/Type_1_font) embedding
* Micro-typographic extensions such as margin [kerning](/source/kerning) and font expansion
* Direct access to PDF-specific features such as hyperlinks, tables of contents and document information

== See also ==
{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}
* [List of TeX extensions](/source/List_of_TeX_extensions)
* [List of PDF software](/source/List_of_PDF_software)
* [LuaTeX](/source/LuaTeX)
* [XeTeX](/source/XeTeX)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/ pdfTeX project page]
* [https://mirrors.ibiblio.org/CTAN/systems/doc/pdftex/manual/pdftex-a.pdf pdfTeX manual]
* [https://www.pragma-ade.com/pdftex/thesis.pdf  Micro-typographic extensions to the TeX typesetting system] - dissertation by Hàn Thế Thành
* [https://tug.org/interviews/thanh.html  2008 interview]
{{TeX navbox}}

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Category:Free PDF software
Category:Free TeX software

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [PdfTeX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PdfTeX) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PdfTeX?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.