[pdftex] Origin of pdftex

[Sebastian Rahtz]

> It was my understanding that the basic tex program written by DEK was
> frozen forever. So how did pdftex come to be? Is it a fmt like plain 
> or LaTeX or is it a rewrite of the basic program? 

It's an extension. Anyone is welcome to hack TeX as
much as they want, just so long as they don't call the
result "TeX".

TeX is not frozen, by the way. DEK has stopped development,
but he will accept bug reports and will issue fixes
every so often. If you find a bug, the cash reward is now
quite big.  I think he is due to look at bug reports
again next year.
-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      OUCS Information Manager
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431