[Dev-luatex] HarfBuzz [slightly off-topic]

[Hans Hagen]

On 2-2-2011 8:11, Patrick Gundlach wrote:

> If LuaTeX does not open up, there will be a risk of forks. There is already a LuaTeX fork with an xml parser built in. I can understand the reluctance of the LuaTeX team to include unnecessary modules, and it would be helpful if there was a "contrib" directory with third party modules that will be built as a library (.so, .dll) which get installed in the TeXlive system. So one can say for example 'require "harfbuzz"' and have harfbuzz loaded on all platforms LuaTeX is running on.

Eh ... luatex is opened up. One can just load libraries. Preloading a 
whole lot of (arbitrary) libraries makes no sense. I can imagine that at 
some point (when luatex 1 is out) that there will be a bunch of libs 
shipped alongside the binary distributions but that then has to be part 
of regular tex live and miktex and ... distributions. The thing with 
libraries is that they evolve independently and you cannot expect the 
luatex team to keep track of them. The only thing we can provide is a 
stable api into luatex.

It's not a matter of opening up, but a matter of packaging.  Also, when 
I run luatex I don't want at some point in the future to find out that 
an additional 125 libs (plus dependencies) are needed that I don't use.

A repository with additional modules is a secondary effort, alongside 
luatex. I know that Luigi has done lots of tests and is setting up some 
procedure for it, but as this is to be supported on *all* relevant 
platforms it's not something trivial. So, there will be something, but 
not preloaded. (Just like we don't preload macro definitions or fonts or 
...).

Hans


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