24

There are multiple TeX typesetting engines. Both commands (pdflatex and xelatex) generate a PDF. What is the technical/effective/historical/etc. difference between these two commands? I'm using TeX Live.

George Hilliard
  • 15,402
  • 9
  • 58
  • 96
  • Related: [Frequently loaded packages: Differences between pdfLaTeX and XeLaTeX](http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/2984/5764) – Werner Apr 03 '13 at 21:36
  • 3
    Duplicate: [The differences between TeX engines](http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/13593/5764) – Werner Apr 03 '13 at 21:38

1 Answers1

27

PdfTeX and XeTeX and the equivalent commands for latex are two implementations for the same purpose, as you have pointed out already. The Wikipedia articles have more details on the history and development.

One of the main differences from an operational point of view is that XeTeX has better support for fonts -- in particular you can use system fonts instead of only TeX fonts. It also has better support for non-latin character encodings.

Lars Kotthoff
  • 107,425
  • 16
  • 204
  • 204
  • 2
    And UTF8 (so no `babel` nightmares), plus including nearly any of the common graphics formats w/o the need of any prior conversion. – 0 _ Jun 17 '14 at 23:55
  • 3
    So, `xelatex` can be used on the same files that `pdflatex` can render? – Geremia Aug 02 '17 at 17:48
  • As far as I know yes. – Lars Kotthoff Aug 02 '17 at 18:27
  • I have found at least [one example](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/552423/102826) where a valid `pdflatex` file does not work in xelatex. I have a different issue right now, but couldn't pinpoint it yet - it also works with pdflatex but not xelatex. – lucidbrot Nov 30 '20 at 12:22
  • One of the exceptions I've found since is the `pdfinfo` command that only works in pdflatex. – Lars Kotthoff Nov 30 '20 at 14:07