[Tex/LaTex] ny reason to compile to DVI rather than PDF these days

compilingdvidvi-modepdfpdftex

I appreciate that in the past, latex was faster than pdflatex, but computer speeds being what they are nowadays, I can't see any difference in how quickly documents compile…

So, given that the end product I want is the PDF, are there good reasons not to always compile to pdf?

Best Answer

Unless you are a heavy PSTricks user, I think the answer is no, you can always go to pdf directly. Actually, in modern TeX distributions, latex is pdflatex in dvi mode; the underlying engine is the same.

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[Tex/LaTex] Using LuaTeX as a replacement for pdfTeX

I think we don't need to do much. The only incompatible thing I know is the UTF-8 encoding.

To answer the sub-questions:

Any package related to input encodings and font encodings:
- inputenc. You should always use UTF-8 encoding to input the text. For backward compatibility, use luainputenc instead.
- fontenc. Don't use it with fontspec explictly.
- textcomp. Use xunicode instead, which is loaded by fontspec.
- Most old font packages (esp. for text fonts) are better not to be used. For example, use XITS, TeX Gyre Termes or Linux Libertine O fonts with fontspec instead of times package, and use Unicode fonts for main text together with mathptmx and txfonts (font math fonts only) to get proper text fonts.
- CJK is not compatible with LuaTeX. Today only a few unofficial LaTeX packages in Korea and Japan are available. This may be not very important for western users.
fontspec. To load TrueType/OpenType fonts. This is the only necessary one, I think. Also, luacode and unicode-math are useful.

[Tex/LaTex] n easy way of producing a pdf without pictures

What about

\usepackage[draft]{graphicx}

in your .tex file?

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Using LuaTeX as a replacement for pdfTeX

[Tex/LaTex] n easy way of producing a pdf without pictures

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