Everywhere in the TeX community, I see suggestions like \parskip, \obeylines, \parindent, etc. I'd be surprised not to find them even in the most basic LaTeX packages. So I figured they must be deeper down in the TeX core as primitives. Knowing how they work would be very useful.
Googling for tex primitives takes me to TeX Primitive Control Sequences. Is there a printable PDF version of such a reference?
Best Answer
I think your best bet is Victor Eijkhout's TeX by topic.
Oh, and by the way, some of those “primitives” aren't primitives at all, but plain TeX macros.