TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange
TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [pdftex]

pdfTeX is an extension of TeX which is capable of directly generating PDF output. Use this tag if the used engine – pdftex/pdflatex – is significant to your question.

pdfTeX is an extension of TeX which is capable of directly generating PDF output.

Use this tag if your question is about pdf(La)TeX specific problems, i.e. if the subject has something to do with pdfTeX but not with standard (La)TeX which produces DVI output.

For standard LaTeX choose an appropriate specific Tag. Since the majority of questions on this site deal with LaTeX, there's no need for a LaTeX tag. However, if your question is really about LaTeX in general, you may choose the tag.

The other most common TeX/LaTeX engines are and .

5758 questions
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"Undefined control sequence" at beginning of any simple document

Very new to Tex. Trying to get the most basic doc to work. Not matter what I do I always get an "Undefined control sequence" at line 1 of my document. As of now, I am only trying to build the following: \documentclass{article} \begin{document} This…
Brad
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What's the difference between pdfTeX and pdfLaTeX?

I've been working on a project and compiled it using pdfLaTeX, then tried to compile using pdftex and got a whole lot of errors. I'd like to know why that would happen since it's a very plain file and I did not put a pdflatex option in documentclass…
Ayman Elmasry
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pdflatex seems to ignore -output-directory

I have a directory structure like this: project pdf src My source file is located in src, and I'm trying to run pdflatex from the project directory using a command like this: pdflatex -halt-on-error src/foo.tex -output-directory pdf The…
Koz Ross
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Error: I can't find the format file pdflatex.fmt

For no particular reason that I could identify, I was faced with the impossibility to compile any latex document and invariably got this error message each time I tried : LaTeX: problems after [0] pages kpathsea: Running mktexfmt…
M. Toya
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The file does not conform to Adobe's published PDF?

My question is how to check if a pdf file created with pdfTeX-1.40.12 is conform to Adobe's published PDF ? Is it possible to know ? I try to look at the properties of the file with Adobe Reader but I see nothing. This problem appears when I try to…
Alain Matthes
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Preprocessor for LaTeX?

I'm curious to find out whether anybody has suggestions for a preprocessor for LaTeX documents. What I'm thinking of is something like cpp. The motivation for my question is that I'm writing a large document in which I insert comments to myself,…
user1362373
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How to find out and interpret the LaTeX version number?

When I do latex -v to find out which version of latex (or pdftex, xelatex etc., outputs look similar) I am using, I get pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.16 (TeX Live 2015/Debian) [...] What does this version number tell me?
fuenfundachtzig
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Regular expressions with pdfTeX

How can one use \pdfmatch with regular expressions and where can one find a listing and description of all the available pdfTeX primitives and help on their use? Edit The latest issue of the pdfTeX documentation, now contains a small description…
yannisl
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better reference for apparently undocumented latex command line options?

I've gradually blundered upon a number of useful pdflatex command line options from questions in this forum, but not all of these are documented (specifically the useful -file-line-error parameter). My command line now includes the following…
Peeter Joot
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Elsevier Submission: LaTeX Error: Mismatched LaTeX support files detected

I am trying to submit a revised article to Elsevier Journal of Computer Network through https://editorialmanager.com I am submiting my .tex files that were written on OverLeaf.com. the way this works, is that the Editorial Manager is supposed to…
Forrest
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Draw horizontal line vertically centralized

Ok, the title might be confusing. But the idea is pretty simple: I have this text that I would like to add a line on its side, but the line should be centralized vertically into the line, like so: Any ideas on how to do it? Thanks!
Luiz Pedro Franciscatto Guerra
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Which internal TeX macro stores the MediaBox string, and how can I read it?

Background: All PDF has a MediaBox that describes the page size, for each page. This is found in the PDF as (for example, US letter) the text string /MediaBox [0 0 612 792] where the numbers are "big points." It is easy to calculate what the…
RobtA
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calling latex from php: security issues

I am trying to program a web interface for automated generation of calculus tests. The idea is to take some input from user, say number of problems and name of instructor, and then by means of php generate the latex file, process it with pdflatex…
user1898918
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Is it possible to pass definitions to LaTeX from the command line?

Possible Duplicate: Passing parameters to a document How do I make make different versions of my document with command line compile flags? I find myself wanting to be able to compile my document with different settings (e.g. draft mode, Beamer…
Vegard
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Errors using pdfx package to generate PDF/A

I need to submit my thesis in PDF/A format. I am using LyX, but I don't think that is relevant for my question. I get this error message when running pdfx package: ! pdfTeX error (ext5): cannot open file for embedding. l.137 ...eam attr{/N 4} …
Mendy
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