PostScript, TeX and LaTeX: Understanding Their Differences and Interactions

Ever wondered why scientists love LaTeX, why printers worship PostScript, and why Word users cry themselves to sleep? Well, you’re in the right place.

In this article, we’ll compare PostScript, TeX, and LaTeX, and explore their historical relationships, key differences, and how they work together (or don’t).

🏛️ The History: How PostScript, TeX, and LaTeX Came to Be

✍️ TeX: The Father of Modern Typesetting

In the late 1970s, legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth (yes, that Knuth—the one with The Art of Computer Programming) got fed up with how bad typesetting looked in published mathematics papers. So, like any rational human being, he decided to create his own typesetting system.

• TeX (pronounced “tech”) was born in 1978.
• It focused on perfect typography, especially for math.
• It became the gold standard for scientific and academic documents.

📚 LaTeX: The User-Friendly (Kinda) Extension

TeX was powerful but insanely complicated. So, in 1983, Leslie Lamport created LaTeX, which added macros and templates to make TeX easier to use.

• LaTeX turned TeX into a structured document preparation system.
• Scientists, engineers, and researchers embraced it for academic writing.
• If you’ve ever written a research paper in physics or math, you’ve used LaTeX.

🖨️ PostScript: The Printing Revolution

Meanwhile, over at Xerox PARC, the printing nerds were trying to solve a different problem: how to make printers understand digital documents. The result?

• PostScript, developed by Adobe in 1982.
• A Turing-complete programming language for describing printed pages.
• It became the standard for professional publishing and printing.

🔗 TeX on Wikipedia
🔗 LaTeX on Wikipedia
🔗 PostScript on Wikipedia

🆚 How Do They Compare?

Let’s break it down:

Key Differences

• PostScript is for telling printers what to do (think of it as a printer’s programming language).
• TeX is for typesetting perfect documents (but without much concern for printers).
• LaTeX is a structured system for writing documents, built on top of TeX.

🔗 How PostScript, TeX, and LaTeX Interact

Even though they serve different purposes, they often work together in the publishing world.

🏗️ How They Connect

1. LaTeX generates a DVI file (DeVice Independent format).
2. DVI can be converted into PostScript using dvips (a tool that converts DVI files into PostScript).
3. PostScript can be converted into a PDF using ps2pdf.
4. PDFs are the final, polished format for viewing and printing.

So, a typical LaTeX document workflow might look like this:

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LaTeX (source) → DVI → PostScript (via dvips) → PDF (via ps2pdf)

For direct PDF output, pdflatex can be used, skipping the PostScript step:

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LaTeX (source) → PDF (via pdflatex)

🔢 PostScript, TeX, and LaTeX Code Examples

1. A Simple LaTeX Document

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\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello, world! Here’s a mathematical formula:

\[
E = mc^2
\]

\end{document}

(This creates a basic document with Einstein’s famous equation.)

2. The Same in Plain TeX

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\hbox{Hello, world!}
$$ E = mc^2 $$
\bye

(Less structured, but still works!)

3. A Basic PostScript File

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%!
/Helvetica findfont 24 scalefont setfont
100 700 moveto
(Hello, world!) show
showpage

(This prints “Hello, World!” at position (100,700) on the page.)

4. LaTeX Generating a PostScript File

To generate a PostScript file from LaTeX:

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latex myfile.tex
dvips myfile.dvi -o myfile.ps

(This produces a .ps file that a printer can understand.)

📚 Reference Table: Key Commands

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📊 Comparing LaTeX and PostScript Statements

Since LaTeX and PostScript both define how documents are structured and rendered, it’s useful to compare their syntax. Below is a side-by-side comparison of common document formatting tasks in LaTeX and PostScript.

📝 LaTeX vs. PostScript Reference Table

• LaTeX is structured and document-oriented, whereas PostScript is more like a programming language for printers.
• LaTeX provides high-level abstractions (like \section{} and \begin{}), while PostScript requires manually placing everything.
• PostScript has no built-in document flow, unlike LaTeX.

🏁 Key Ideass

• TeX is for typesetting math and documents with extreme precision.
• LaTeX is a user-friendly macro package for TeX, making it easier to structure documents.
• PostScript is a full-fledged programming language for printers.
• PostScript and TeX/LaTeX often interact in document workflows (via dvips and ps2pdf).
• PDF is the final destination, often generated from either PostScript or LaTeX.

🔗 References

• TeX (Wikipedia)
• LaTeX (Wikipedia)
• PostScript (Wikipedia)
• Donald Knuth’s TeX Project