Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

Given that LuaTeX allows shell-escapes, I think that it makes a lot of sense to replace some Perl scripts by LuaTeX. For instance, Heiko fixed two bugs in epstopdf I reported but I did not get any response from the author of the C-version which still resides on CTAN.

http://ctan.org/tex-archive/support/epstopdf

This version is still broken. TeXLive does not provide Perl for Windows users and I suppose that MikTeX doesn't as well. Instead, binaries are provided. If someone detects a bug, a fixed Perl script can be provided for UNIX users immediately but Windows users still depend on someone who provides new binaries.

i've never used epstopdf so maybe i talk non-sense, but running perl on windows is rather trivial: there is a good installer, and it comes with many libs included (more than on a standard linux install) if the win tex distributions ship with 'binaries' they are not c binaries, but probably zipped 'perl binary + script ' archives; there is actually no reason for this so if a windows user wants to use the raw scritp with his system perl, aal he/she has to do is - install perl - copy stub files [runperl.exe -> whatever.exe] - put perl scripts in tesmf scripts path and things should run ok (for context users i recommend using "texmfstart whatever.pl" in stub files)

Though I like Perl very much I think that LuaTeX is quite great. It can be make things much more portable. Suppose that someone ports epstopdf to LuaTeX, then Windows users can update easily.

so, although your proposal is ok from the prespective of portability, it's not needed from the perspective of windows concerning portability ... in principle all those shell scripts that now need to be provided as c program of perl script on windows qualify for some kind of luafying (we can even consider putting lua itself in the bin distributions; it's small) (context ships with a ruby ps->pdf script and converting that would take quite some lua code -)

There is one problem concerning how [pdf]TeX reads the command line. [pdf]TeX expects a filename and considers all arguments which come before the filename as options. It complains if an option is not known. However, options after the filename are accessible by TeX.

Try the following file:

getargs.tex __________________________________________________________________ \def\OptionPrefix{-}

\newlinechar=`\^^J \def\echo#1{\message{^^J#1}}

\def\car#1#2\\{#1}\def\cdr#1#2\\{#2}

\def\DefineOption#1#2{\expandafter\def\csname:opt:#1\endcsname{#2}}

\def\ProcessOption#1{\csname:opt:#1\endcsname}

\def\ProcessFile#1{\echo{File: "#1"}}

\def\TestOption#1{% \expandafter\ifx\csname:opt:#1\endcsname\relax \echo{Unknown Option "#1", ignored} \else \ProcessOption{#1} \fi }

\def\GetArg#1 {\setbox0=\lastbox\endgraf \if\OptionPrefix\car#1\\ \edef\Arg{\cdr#1\\} \TestOption\Arg \else \ProcessFile{#1}\expandafter\end \fi }

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\DefineOption{abc}{\echo{Known Option "abc"}} \DefineOption{def}{\echo{Known Option "def"}}

\everypar{\GetArg} __________________________________________________________________

When I say

tex -abc getargs -def -uvw xyz

I get:

$ tex -abc getargs -def -uvw xyz tex: unrecognized option `-abc' This is TeX, Version 3.141592 (Web2C 7.5.4) (./getargs.tex) Known Option "def" Unknown Option "uvw", ignored File: "xyz" No pages of output. Transcript written on getargs.log.

Though it is good that TeX makes all arguments available to TeX which come after the filename, there is a problem if getargs is a format file.

In this case the command line looks like

getargs -abc -def -uvw xyz

and everything before "xyz" is lost.

In other words, if you say

epstopdf -hires myfile.eps

TeX will complain

epstopdf: unrecognized option `-hires.'

How can this problem be fixed?

The current behaviour of web2c is absolutely correct but I assume that LuaTeX users need a bit more.

i can imagine that we provide access to the raw commandline (i assume that this info is availabl esomewhere)

Is it possible to convince [pdf]TeX to ignore unknown options for particular format files by adding some lines to texmf.cnf similar to

TEXINPUTS.latex = ...

which disable commandline option checking and pass everything to TeX?

Another point: It would be nice if LuaTeX allows shell-escapes. This might be regarded as beeing unsecure. What about having a list of trusted programs in texmf.cnf?

this is always a tricky thing and i've pondered a lot about it; there are several cases that make sense: 1 - permit nothing 2 - permit everything 3 - permit only programs in same path as calling binary (e.g. pdftex) resides 4 - permits only programs in texmftree 5 - permits only programs in given list (and maybe combinations) so we need a setup like: progname.systemlist=...;...;...; progname.systemstate=<number> for context it would be enough to have context.systemlist=texmfstart context.systemstate=5 since texmfstart will handle the rest Hans