pdftex - PDF output from TeX

       The  primary  author of pdfTeX is Han The Thanh, with major contributions from Petr Sojka, Jiri Zlatuska,
       and Peter Breitenlohner (eTeX).

       TeX was designed by Donald E. Knuth, who implemented it using his Web system for Pascal programs.  It was
       ported to Unix at Stanford by Howard Trickey, and at Cornell by Pavel Curtis.  The  version  now  offered
       with  the  Unix  TeX distribution is that generated by the Web to C system (web2c), originally written by
       Tomas Rokicki and Tim Morgan.  The encTeX extensions were written by Petr Olsak.

Web2C 2025/dev                                    2 March 2024                                         PDFTEX(1)

       pdfTeX is available for a large variety of machine architectures and operating systems.  pdfTeX  is  part
       of all major TeX distributions.
       The pdfTeX home page: http://www.pdftex.org.
       pdfTeX on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/pdftex.
       pdfTeX mailing list for all discussion: https://lists.tug.org/pdftex.

       This  version of pdfTeX fails to trap arithmetic overflow when dimensions are added or subtracted.  Cases
       where this occurs are rare, but when it does the generated DVI or PDF file will be invalid.

       Run  the  pdfTeX  typesetter  on file, usually creating file.pdf.  If the file argument has no extension,
       ".tex" will be appended to it.  Instead of a filename, a set of pdfTeX commands can be given,  the  first
       of which must start with a backslash.  With a &format argument pdfTeX uses a different set of precompiled
       commands, contained in format.fmt; it is usually better to use the -fmtformat option instead.

       pdfTeX is a version of TeX, with the e-TeX extensions, that can create PDF files as well as DVI files.

       In DVI mode, pdfTeX can be used as a complete replacement for the TeX engine.

       The  typical  use  of  pdfTeX  is with a pregenerated formats for which PDF output has been enabled.  The
       pdftex command uses the equivalent of the plain TeX format, and the pdflatex command uses the  equivalent
       of the LaTeX format.  To generate formats, use the -ini switch.

       The  pdfinitex  and pdfvirtex commands are pdfTeX's analogues to the initex and virtex commands.  In this
       installation, if the links exist, they are symbolic links to the pdftex executable.

       In PDF mode, pdfTeX can natively handle the PDF, JPG, JBIG2, and PNG  graphics  formats.   pdfTeX  cannot
       include  PostScript  or  Encapsulated  PostScript  (EPS)  graphics files; first convert them to PDF using
       epstopdf(1).  pdfTeX's handling of its command-line arguments  is  similar  to  that  of  the  other  TeX
       programs in the web2c implementation.

       Starting  with  version  1.40,  pdfTeX  incorporates  the e-TeX extensions, and pdfeTeX is just a copy of
       pdfTeX.  See etex(1).

       See  the Kpathsea library documentation (e.g., the `Path specifications' node) for precise details of how
       the environment variables are used.  The kpsewhich utility can  be  used  to  query  the  values  of  the
       variables.

       One caveat: In most pdfTeX formats, you cannot use ~ in a filename you give directly to pdfTeX, because ~
       is an active character in TeX, and hence is expanded, not taken as part of the filename.  Other programs,
       such as Metafont, do not have this problem.

       TEXMFOUTPUT
              Normally,  pdfTeX  puts  its  output files in the current directory.  If any output file cannot be
              opened there, it tries to  open  it  in  the  directory  specified  in  the  environment  variable
              TEXMFOUTPUT.   There  is no default value for that variable.  For example, if you say pdftexpaper
              and the current directory is not writable and TEXMFOUTPUT has the value /tmp, pdfTeX  attempts  to
              create  /tmp/paper.log  (and  /tmp/paper.pdf,  if  any  output  is produced.)  TEXMFOUTPUT is also
              checked for input files, as TeX often generates files that  need  to  be  subsequently  read;  for
              input,  no  suffixes  (such as ``.tex'') are added by default, the input name is simply checked as
              given.

       TEXINPUTS
              Search path for \input and \openin files.  This normally starts with ``.'', so that user files are
              found before system files.  An empty path component will be replaced with the paths defined in the
              texmf.cnf file.  For  example,  set  TEXINPUTS  to  ".:/home/user/tex:"  to  prepend  the  current
              directory and ``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path.

       TEXFORMATS
              Search path for format files.

       TEXEDIT
              Command  template  for  switching  to  editor.   The  default,  usually  vi, is set when pdfTeX is
              compiled.

       TFMFONTS
              Search path for font metric (.tfm) files.

       SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
              If set, its value, taken to be in epoch-seconds, will be  used  for  the  timestamps  in  the  PDF
              output, such as the CreationDate and ModDate keys.  This is useful for making reproducible builds.

       FORCE_SOURCE_DATE
              If  set  to  the  value "1", the time-related TeX primitives (\year, \month, \day, \time) are also
              initialized from the value of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.  This is not recommended if there is  any  viable
              alternative.
              pdfTeX also has several primitives to support reproducible builds, which are preferable to setting
              these environment variables; see the main manual.

       Many,  many  more  environment  variables  may  be consulted related to path searching.  See the Kpathsea
       manual.

       The location of the files mentioned below varies from system to system.  Use  the  kpsewhich  utility  to
       find their locations.

       pdftex.map
              Font name mapping definitions.

       *.tfm  Metric files for pdfTeX's fonts.

       *.fmt  Predigested pdfTeX format (.fmt) files.

       pdftex - PDF output from TeX

       This version of pdfTeX understands the following command line options.

       -cnf-linestring
              Parse string as a texmf.cnf configuration line.  See the Kpathsea manual.

       -draftmode
              Sets \pdfdraftmode so pdfTeX doesn't write a PDF  and  doesn't  read  any  included  images,  thus
              speeding up execution.

       -enc   Enable  the  encTeX  extensions.   This  option  is  only effective in combination with -ini.  For
              documentation of the encTeX extensions see http://www.olsak.net/enctex.html.

       -etex  Enable the e-TeX extensions.  This option  is  only  effective  in  combination  with  -ini.   See
              etex(1).

       -file-line-error
              Print error messages in the form file:line:error which is similar to the way many compilers format
              them.

       -no-file-line-error
              Disable printing error messages in the file:line:error style.

       -file-line-error-style
              This is the old name of the -file-line-error option.

       -fmtformat
              Use format as the name of the format to be used, instead of the name by which pdfTeX was called or
              a %& line.

       -halt-on-error
              Exit with an error code when an error is encountered during processing.

       -help  Print help message and exit.

       -ini   Start  in  INI mode, which is used to dump formats.  The INI mode can be used for typesetting, but
              no format is preloaded, and basic initializations like setting catcodes may be required.

       -interactionmode
              Sets the interaction mode.  The  mode  can  be  either  batchmode,  nonstopmode,  scrollmode,  and
              errorstopmode.  The meaning of these modes is the same as that of the corresponding \commands.

       -ipc   Send  DVI  or  PDF  output  to  a socket as well as the usual output file.  Whether this option is
              available is the choice of the installer.

       -ipc-start
              As -ipc, and starts the server at the other end as well.  Whether this option is available is  the
              choice of the installer.

       -jobnamename
              Use name for the job name, instead of deriving it from the name of the input file.

       -kpathsea-debugbitmask
              Sets  path  searching  debugging  flags  according  to  the  bitmask.  See the Kpathsea manual for
              details.

       -mktexfmt
              Enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex or tfm.

       -mltex Enable MLTeX extensions.  Only effective in combination with -ini.

       -no-mktexfmt
              Disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex or tfm.

       -output-commentstring
              In DVI mode, use string for the DVI file comment instead of the date. This option  is  ignored  in
              PDF mode.

       -output-directorydirectory
              Write  output  files  in  directory  instead  of  the  current  directory.  Look up input files in
              directory first, then along the normal search path.

       -output-formatformat
              Set the output format mode, where format must be either pdf or dvi.  This also influences the  set
              of graphics formats understood by pdfTeX.

       -parse-first-line
              If  the  first  line  of  the main input file begins with %& parse it to look for a dump name or a
              -translate-file option.

       -no-parse-first-line
              Disable parsing of the first line of the main input file.

       -prognamename
              Pretend to be program name.  This affects both the format used and the search paths.

       -recorder
              Enable the filename recorder.  This leaves a trace of the files opened for input and output  in  a
              file with extension .fls.

       -shell-escape
              Enable  the \write18{command} construct.  The command can be any shell command.  This construct is
              normally disallowed for security reasons.

       -no-shell-escape
              Disable the \write18{command} construct, even if it is enabled in the texmf.cnf file.

       -shell-restricted
              Enable restricted \write18{}, as explained in the ``Shell escapes'' section of the  Web2c  Texinfo
              manual.

       -src-specials
              In DVI mode, insert source specials into the DVI file.  This option is ignored in PDF mode.

       -src-specialswhere
              In  DVI  mode,  insert source specials in certain places of the DVI file.  The where argument is a
              comma-separated value list: cr, display, hbox, math, par, parent, or vbox.  This option is ignored
              in PDF mode.

       -synctexNUMBER
              generate SyncTeX data for previewers according to bits of NUMBER.  See the synctex manual page for
              details.

       -translate-filetcxname
              Use the tcxname translation table to set the mapping of input characters and re-mapping of  output
              characters.

       -default-translate-filetcxname
              Like -translate-file except that a %& line can overrule this setting.

       -version
              Print version information and exit.

       -8bit  make all characters printable by default.

       This  manual  page  is not meant to be exhaustive.  The complete documentation for this version of pdfTeX
       can be found in the  pdfTeXusermanual  and  the  Texinfo  manuals  Kpathsealibrary,  Web2C:ATeXimplementation.  These manuals, and more, can be accessed from the pdfTeX or CTAN web pages given above.

       Some related programs: epstopdf(1), etex(1), latex(1), luatex(1), mptopdf(1), tex(1), mf(1).

pdftex [options] [&format] [file|\commands]