On 9/25/2015 4:09 PM, Orion Poplawski wrote:
I'm just starting to take a look how luatex makes use of lua. And it appears that luatex does not merely use lua, but extends it in various ways, essentially creating new lua dialect. Is the assessment correct? Is there any documentation on this?
Indeed we have some more on board. Keep in mind that lua is used as extension language so whenever it's used in an application there can be extensions. Btw, a dialect implies a different language. Adding a couple of functions is not making it a dialect.
Also, is luajit used in the same way, or would it be possible to use a system installed luajit in building luatex?
The only benefit of luajit is the faster virtual machine. A downside is that there are some limitations in memory cq. stack usage. We use a patch that makes the string hashing faster (we use the normal lua method instead of the luajit one that is optimizied for urls and that can make luajit slower than lua). Becaus eluatex uses lua as extension language it will always be shipped with a specific version (linked in or alongside the binary). Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------