[Tex/LaTex] pdf vs dvi vs postscript

dvipdfpostscript

I have a few questions regarding these three:

  1. What is the difference between those three outputs?

  2. Does it make any difference in how my code is processed or just how it
    is displayed? What's the closest one to the "real" output?

  3. Is there any benefit from using one over another?

I know there is a question about a list of viewers (Output viewers for use with LaTeX), and what I'm actually more interested in is why do we have these choices? It seems to me that perhaps there is a reason for size, portability or something else…

Best Answer

DVI is TeX' own DeVice Independent format, it isn't understood outside the TeX world.

PostScript was Adobe's first own "device independent" format (it is a vector format, really a program to define what to paint on the page). PDF (Portable Document Format) is a development by Adobe on PostScript to make it more compact and add other capabilities. PDF is the de facto standard format for electronic documents.

I'd suggest you use pdflatex or such to generate PDF directly. Going DVI --> PDF looses some capabilities (and is a extra step).

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