What's the difference between TeX and LaTeX, and should I use pdfTeX or pdfLaTeX?

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Jimmy Snyder
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I was feeling sorry for the guy that started that thread, so I took this discussion off to a new thread. I don't know if there is a better forum for it.

matt grime said:
It means learning to love the command line though.

Actually, I was already not using GUIs long before there even were GUIs. I got the miktex package and started using the pdftex utility. I haven't read any documentation so I'm probably not using it to best advantage, but it does work for me.

What is the difference between tex and latex? Should I use pdftex or pfdlatex? Pretty soon I am going to post my results in Snyder-Conway theory on my website and it will be in a pdf file.
 
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jimmysnyder said:
I was feeling sorry for the guy that started that thread, so I took this discussion off to a new thread. I don't know if there is a better forum for it.



Actually, I was already not using GUIs long before there even were GUIs. I got the miktex package and started using the pdftex utility. I haven't read any documentation so I'm probably not using it to best advantage, but it does work for me.

What is the difference between tex and latex? Should I use pdftex or pfdlatex? Pretty soon I am going to post my results in Snyder-Conway theory on my website and it will be in a pdf file.

Essentially, LaTeX is a built on TeX. TeX itself, is quite difficult to use, whereas, LaTeX was written by mathematicians/scientists for mathematicians/scientists. TeX, itself, is also quite old. You should use all the *latex commands, rather than the *tex commands.
 
"I was already not using GUIs long before there even were GUIs."

Weren't we all?
 
HallsofIvy said:
Weren't we all?

I can't speak for everyone. My kids can't even spell CLI.

I got a book on latex and now I see that what I want is latex, not tex. So I converted my sample.tex to lasample.tex and successfully converted it to pdf. Thanks to all for the help.