dvipdf, dvipdfm, dvipdfmxの違い

Linux Debian

メモ。日本語を使うのならばdvipdfmxを使うのがよい。

dvipdf

一度、dvipsで出力し、その結果をpdfに変換している

（Bash Cures Cancer: dvipdf man pageより）
This script invokes dvips(1) with the -q option, and pipes its output into gs(1) with the following options:

		       -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite

as well as -sOutputFile and any options from the command-line.

dvipdfm

直接dviからpdfにしているみたい（？）。TrueTypeフォントが使える。

(The DVIPDFM pageより)
Dvipdfm is a DVI to PDF translator. Its features include:

  • TeX \special's that approximate the functionality of the PostScript pdfmarks used by Adobe Acrobat Distiller. Links, outlines, articles, and named destinations are supported, for example.
  • Support for standard DVI specials such as the HyperTeX specials and the TPIC specials.
  • Support for thumbnails (with help from GhostScript).
  • Ability to include PDF, PNG, and JPEG files as embedded images. For PDF files, only the first page is included. Resources will be embedded from the original file as necessary. File inclusion does not work for PDF files that store the page contents in several segments in an array.
  • Virtual font support
  • Support for both Type1 and PK fonts.
  • Support for arbitrary linear graphics transformations. Any material on the page can be scaled and rotated.
  • A color stack accessible via \special's.
  • Partial font embedding and stream compression for reduced output file size
  • Balanced page and destination trees for improved reader access on very large document files.

dvipdfmx

dvipdfmxの拡張。CJK（中国語、日本語、韓国語）に対応。

（THE DVIPDFMx PROJECTより）
Most features and enhancement added to dvipdfm is related to multi-byte encoding and font support, especially for supporting CJK languages.