Wendell Piez wrote:

>
> (What's TeX implemented in, 
>C? So it can never be more standard than C 
>
pseudo-Pascal

>... or is there a TeX 
>specification that abstracts it away?)
>  
>
not really. specification of what? TeX is a programming
language, which compiles its programs into a binary
format with instructions for a machine makes pages.

>But what does TeX/LaTeX do about fonts? Are these packaged with it too?
>  
>
TeX doesn't care about fonts per se, just their metrics. It generates
a device-independent page description. The renderer of *that*
needs to find actual fonts. In practice, Type1 fonts are the
most likely things to use.


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