PDFJADETEX(1)

💖 PDFJADETEX(1) 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about pdfjadetex — it's a General Commands Manual page, and it's literally the moment you've been waiting for. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

pdfjadetex — PDF output from JadeTeX, no cap 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pdfjadetex [options] [commands]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So this manual page was derived from the manual page for pdfTeX and it is not meant to be exhaustive — like, it's the trailer, not the whole movie. 🎬 The complete documentation for this version of TeX lives in the info file or the manual Web2C: A TeX implementation.

pdfjadeTeX is a version of TeX that can create PDF files as well as DVI files. Yes, both. Versatile queen. 👑

The typical use of pdfjadeTeX is with pregenerated formats for which PDF output has been enabled. The pdfjadetex command uses the equivalent of the plain JadeTeX format.

And here's the vibe: pdfjadeTeX's handling of its command-line arguments is similar to that of LaTeX. iykyk 💫

💅 OPTIONS 💅

This version of pdfjadeTeX understands the following command line options. She's fluent. 🗣️

• --fmt format — use format as the name of the format to be used, instead of the name by which pdfjadeTeX was called or a %& line.
• --help — print help message and exit. bye bestie, but informed. 🙈
• --ini — be pdfinitex, for dumping formats; this is implicitly true if the program is called as pdfinitex.
• --interaction mode — sets the interaction mode. The mode can be one of 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. (installer's call, not ours 🫶)
• --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.
• --kpathsea-debug bitmask — sets path searching debugging flags according to the bitmask. See the Kpathsea manual for details.
• --maketex fmt — enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or tfm.
• --no-maketex fmt — disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or tfm.
• --output-comment string — use string for the DVI file comment instead of the date.
• --progname name — pretend to be program name. This affects both the format used and the search paths. method acting, honestly 🎭
• --shell-escape — enable the \write18{command} construct. The command can be any Bourne shell command. This construct is normally disallowed for security reasons.
• --version — print version information and exit.

⚠️ Security tea: --shell-escape opens up \write18{command}, and command can be any Bourne shell command. That's why it's normally disallowed — security reasons, periodt. Be careful who you hand that power to. 💀

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

See the Kpathsearch library documentation (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. She's searchable. 🔍

🫶 One caveat, bestie: in most pdfjadeTeX formats, you cannot use ~ in a filename you give directly to pdfjadeTeX, because ~ is an active character, and hence is expanded, not taken as part of the filename. Other programs, such as Metafont, do not have this problem. (not Metafont being the drama-free one for once 😭)

• TEXMFOUTPUT — normally, pdfjadeTeX 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 tex paper and the current directory is not writable, if TEXMFOUTPUT has the value /tmp, pdfjadeTeX attempts to create /tmp/paper.log (and /tmp/paper.pdf, if any output is produced.)
• TEXINPUTS — search path for \input and \openin files. This should probably start with ''.'', so that user files are found before system files.
• TEXFONTS — search path for font metric (.tfm) files.
• TEXFORMATS — search path for format files.
• TEXPOOL — search path for pdfinitex internal strings.
• TEXEDIT — command template for switching to editor. The default, usually vi, is set when pdfjadeTeX is compiled.

🎀 FILES 🎀

The location of the files mentioned below varies from system to system. Use the kpsewhich utility to find their locations. They're not lost, they're just mysterious. 🧚

• pdfjadetex.pool — encoded text of pdfjadeTeX's messages.
• texfonts.map — filename mapping definitions.
• *.tfm — metric files for pdfjadeTeX's fonts.
• *.fmt — predigested pdfjadeTeX format (.fmt) files.

💀 BUGS 💀

Okay so this one's real, not a vibe: this version of pdfjadeTeX fails to trap arithmetic overflow when dimensions are added or subtracted. Cases where this occurs are rare, but when it does the generated DVI file will be invalid. So like... rare but catastrophic. 👑💥

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

jadetex(1), tex(1), mf(1), undump(1) — go read those too, bestie, the lore is deep. 📚

🌸 AUTHORS 🌸

The author of pdfjadeTeX is Sebastian Rahtz. 👑

This manual page was derived by Marcus Brinkmann for the Debian distribution from the pdfTeX manual page from the teTeX distribution by Thomas Esser.

and that's the whole page, bestie — shoutout to Marcus Brinkmann, who wrote this one down on 12 July 1998, under the PDFJADETEX(1) banner. slay, honestly. 💖✨🦋