Jonathan Sauer wrote:
Hello,
I have just released the new beta for luatex, with version number now at 0.20.0. This will be the last beta with big changes in it for a while: I will start work on the mplib project now, and that will be my main focus for the coming two/three months. I have planned for bug-fix releases for this beta, though.
Great news!
What does this mean for the further development of LuaTeX? I would guess that the fourth stage, as defined on LuaTeX's homepage, is now finished. Still:
- Apart from integrating MetaPost and the TODO list in the manual, is LuaTeX feature-complete?
No, there will be more callbacks, for instance in the page building stage, more control over inserts, etc. Also, the backend will be redone (separation, more control over pdf, image inclusions). Parts will be rewritten in C instead of pascal. Font data structures will be extended (esp protruding and hz vectors), etc etc
- Can the Lua interface be considered as being (more or less) stable?
no, it's a beta after all, but for the existing features and interfaces no fundamental changes will take place; between the previous and current beta there have been changes; around tug 2008 much will be stable (first formal release), at eurotex 2009 we plan to release the version where at least documented parts of the interface are frozen.
- What is planned between 2008 and 2010?
well, we have a wish list, but hen we have enough lua callbacks we may not need to add much; eventually there will be a tex kernel (in c) with a c interface; currently global properties will become structures, maybe we will be abel to run multiple instances .. who knowns
* Completely overhauled hyphenation and ligkern application, including the addition of a new "lang" table in lua to interface to the language parameters, some extra functions in the "node" table, and a few extra callbacks ("hyphenate", "ligaturing", "kerning", "post_linebreak_filter").
This is a really, really great change from the original TeX, especially:
intended -)
- "--" does not insert a discretionary (well, if \exhyphenchar is set to 0).
- \hyphenation can contain complex discretionaries, thus allowing automatic changes such as backen => bak-ken ("to bake").
* a bunch of bugs reported on the mailing list have been fixed (I hope all of them).
I'm afraid to ask: What about font expansion? ;-)
next year ... data tables (currently global) will move to fonts, maybe real alternative glyph support, etc
Have fun,
I will. I guess I will dump eTeX as the required engine for my private format and use LuaTeX all the way. No more active characters for input and output encoding, better key-value processing ... nice!
Well, as soon as I have figured out how to correctly load OpenType fonts ... incidentally, that is an place the manual could use some work: Section 4.12.2 explains how to get a metrics table from an OpenType font -- but now, what this metrics table contains. That makes it quite difficult to convert it to a tfm font table.
this is not for the manual, since there are many implementations possible and the whole idea behind luatex is that we only provide interfaces, no solutions; we have plans to write a luatex book (starting next year) that may contain example code so, for the moment, consider it an experiment, next year, consider it reality and after that integration with macropackages will follow (well, up to he macro package writers of course) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------