1) I want to know the simplest way (and the minimal way) to compile PDFTeX on Windows. From the manual, I see that you have to download web-7.3.tar.gz web2c-7.3.tar.gz pdftex.tar.gz However, this assumes that you have ./configure available (means UNIX or Cygwin). While I have been using Linux for the past two years, I'm afraid, I am too incompetent, dumb, lazy, stupid, and stubborn to learn autoconf and autotools---I want to know exactly what steps are performed while compiling the program and it would be best understood if I had a simple Visual C++ project file to work with. I want to be able to compile pdfTeX from sources using an already available DSP (MS Visual C++ project file)---this means it should somehow use an already existing config.h file. I downloaded the MikTeX sources, but it comes with 65535 other files and directories that I do not need and also mandates the download of Cygwin. 2) Basically, I want to learn a little about the internals of pdfTeX to investigate if I can take the PDF specific C source code out of it and somehow use then in the TeX++ project (which is a reincarnation of CommonTeX, which was an implementation of TeX written in C from scratch by Pat Monardo). I must admit that TeX++ is a piece of cake to install and compile simply because there is no autoconf and autotools to convolute the project. I have been reading TeX, the program these days from cover to cover and comparing the source code to the TeX++ sources and the two are as close as it can get. So I suppose, one could take PDFTeX, strip it out of the web2c files, massage the rest to fit TeX++, and have an easy to compile, and extend version of TeX that produces PDF files directly. Any inputs on this matter? Salman