 Breaking paragraphs into lines by Donald E. Knuth and Michael F. Plass

Software: Practice and Experience 11(11),1119–1184 (1981); DOI10.1002/spe.4380111102. The primary abstract describes paragraph-wide optimization using boxes, glue and penalties, with dynamic programming. Original paper copy: gwern.net/doc/design/typography/tex/1981-knuth.pdf .