The sometimes confusing multitude of things with “TeX” in the name can be sorted in a matrix with extensions to either the macro set (format) or the executable (engine).
The fields show one of the possible commands to start compilation of a document with the engine/format combination. There is some variation between TeX distributions and versions of TeX distributions.
engine\format |
plain TeX |
LaTeX |
ConTeXt |
|---|---|---|---|
tex |
-2 |
- |
|
etex |
latex |
texexec --nobackend |
|
pdftex |
pdflatex |
texexec |
|
xetex |
xelatex |
texexec --xtx4 |
|
luatex |
lualatex |
context5 |
the original by D. Knuth (see also TeXfuture)
E-TeX has been specified by the LaTeX team as the engine for the development of LaTeX, in the immediate future; as a result, LaTeX programmers may (in all current TeX distributions) assume e-TeX functionality [e-TeX catalogue entry].
Current TeX distributions incorporate the features of pdfTeX and e-TeX into a single executable.
ConTeXt Mark II (after creating an xtx format [http://wiki.contextgarden.net/XeTeX])
ConTeXt Mark IV