Comments on: LuaTeX: new primitives, new names http://www.texdev.net/2009/03/05/luatex-new-primitives-new-names/ Coding in the TeX world Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:48:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc By: Will http://www.texdev.net/2009/03/05/luatex-new-primitives-new-names/comment-page-1/#comment-189 Will Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:52:24 +0000 http://www.texdev.net/?p=213#comment-189 I was going to comment on the mailing list, but I didn't want to add to the noise there :) As always, I'm fairly non-committal; I can see both sides of the argument. The problem arises because I think the long-term suggestion is to eventually replace the command-line utility `latex` with a LuaTeX based format. Given that backwards compatibility is guaranteed not to hold in some page layout cases, I'm not sure if this will ever actually happen (although different hyphenation patterns already have the same problem). The only problem is when an old document is processed with a new invisibly-Lua `latex` and `pdflatex` and clashes occur. Unlikely, sure, but the TeX community is remarkably stubborn about preserving backwards compatibility. Having LuaTeX introduce primitives with non-prefixed names reduces the chances that the command line `(pdf)latex` program will end up using it. But if that never happens, then it doesn't matter what the new primitives are called. And if the LuaTeX team aren't fussed about what the command line utility to execute LaTeX2e is called, then it's certainly not be a strong reason for them to reduce the "cleanliness" of their naming schemes. And when we have an ltx3 format it won't matter anyway :) I was going to comment on the mailing list, but I didn’t want to add to the noise there :)

As always, I’m fairly non-committal; I can see both sides of the argument.

The problem arises because I think the long-term suggestion is to eventually replace the command-line utility `latex` with a LuaTeX based format. Given that backwards compatibility is guaranteed not to hold in some page layout cases, I’m not sure if this will ever actually happen (although different hyphenation patterns already have the same problem).

The only problem is when an old document is processed with a new invisibly-Lua `latex` and `pdflatex` and clashes occur. Unlikely, sure, but the TeX community is remarkably stubborn about preserving backwards compatibility. Having LuaTeX introduce primitives with non-prefixed names reduces the chances that the command line `(pdf)latex` program will end up using it.

But if that never happens, then it doesn’t matter what the new primitives are called. And if the LuaTeX team aren’t fussed about what the command line utility to execute LaTeX2e is called, then it’s certainly not be a strong reason for them to reduce the “cleanliness” of their naming schemes.

And when we have an ltx3 format it won’t matter anyway :)

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