On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 11:16 PM, DesdeChaves <desdechaves@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear sirs

I've been looking for a way to simulate data with different distributions (normal, poisson, exponential, etc.) in the .tex file. The use of GSL library is a good option, but it seems impossible to import in luatex. Another way is using the  R-statistical through filter module***, which seems to work well in luatex. At this time I would try to import the GSL functions through  python script. For that i think that i need the older luatex 0.42 but I don't find that.

***
\defineexternalfilter
  [R]
  [
     filtercommand={R CMD BATCH -q --save --restore \externalfilterinputfile\space \externalfilteroutputfile},
     output=\externalfilterbasefile.out,
     directory=output,
     readcommand=\typefile,
     read=no,
     cache=yes,
   ]


Jorge 

I'm sorry to say that I cannot help you  with luatex lunatic, luatex 0.42 is too old and today there are other ways to build wrappers . I can suggest to see SWIG (http://www.swig.org),  there is a very good section on  Lua.
In any case the filter module that you use is often  a reliable  alternative to connect to external programs, so the problem
is often to be sure to have a good program. In your case you can also write a python script that uses that gsl module (if there is such module, I don't  know exactly) and then call python by mean of the filter module.

--
luigi