pdfTeX is an extended version of eTeX that can create PDF directly from
TeX source files and enhance the result of TeX typesetting with the help
of PDF. When PDF output is not selected, pdfTeX produces normal DVI
output, otherwise it produces PDF output that looks essentially
identical to the DVI output

An important aspect of this project was to investigate alternative
justification algorithms, resulting in the "microtypography" features of
margin kerning and font expansion.  This was inspired by Peter Karow's
and Hermann Zapf's work.

pdfTeX is integrated with the original e-TeX sources and Web2c.  It is
actively maintained, but stability is paramount now; only bug fixes and
small enhancements are expected.  Releases are made through TeX Live.

See the file NEWS for changes to the program.
Documentation about pdfTeX can be found at https://www.pdftex.org.
Mailing lists:
https://lists.tug.org/pdftex - help requests, general user discussion
https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman3/lists/ntg-pdftex.ntg.nl/
   - bug reports, development


LEGAL ISSUES
============

pdfTeX is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.

pdfTeX is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more
details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

pdfTeX uses code from TeX; for these parts the original copyright by Don
Knuth applies. See the source files for details.

pdfeTeX uses code from eTeX; for these parts the original copyright by
Peter Breitenlohner applies. See the source files for details.

CONTRIBUTORS
============

Karl Berry, Peter Breitenlohner, Ricardo Sanchez Carmenes, Otfried
Cheong, Thomas Esser, Hans Hagen, Hartmut Henkel, Taco Hoekwater, Pawel
Jackowski, Pavel Janik, Tom Kacvinsky, Akira Kakuto, Reinhard Kotucha,
Derek B. Noonburg, Heiko Oberdiek, Jiri Osoba, Fabrice Popineau,
Sebastian Rahtz, Bernd Raichle, Tomas Rokicki, Leonard Rosenthol, Martin
Schröder, Petr Sojka, Ralf Utermann, Olaf Weber, Jiri Zlatuska.

Some companies have supported the developement of pdfTeX: Adobe Systems
Inc., ArtCom GmbH, Pragma ADE, QuinScape GmbH.

pdfTeX is built on top of TeX, written by Donald Knuth cum suis (Frank
Liang et al.), and e-TeX, written by Peter Breitenlohner cum suis; 
the advanced paragraph optimization is inspired by the work of Hermann Zapf.
