[luatex] Proposal to fix the namespace argument

[Will Robertson]

Hello,

Yesterday I proposed a tidy way to resolve the tension between nice 
primitive names and problems with processing old documents where these 
new primitives may clash with users' macros.

I'd like to formalise the suggestion:

1.  The LuaTeX team name the primitives whatever they please 
(personally I like the names they've chosen up until now).
2.  The LaTeX team or the TeX Live team maintains a luatexconfig.tex 
file that maps all new LuaTeX primitives to some sort of hidden 
namespace that is accessible by package authors.
3.  Probably Plain should do something similar.

Consequences:

1.  Legacy documents are not affected unless they define macros in 
whatever namespace we choose to hide the LuaTeX primitives. (Let's 
assume this won't happen.)

2.  luatextra.sty (say) will allow package writers and users to access 
the new primitives in some form; either by remapping them back to 
userspace names or with some other scheme.

* * *

Disregarding the details of how we hide the primitive names, what do 
you all think of this plan?

* * *

Is there a comprehensive list of primitives defined by LuaTeX? I've got 
a long list culled from the manual but I'm not sure if I caught them 
all. The list I've got is in the file luatexconfig.tex here:
  <http://github.com/wspr/lualatex/tree/master>

I'll also be writing the code there to perform the namespace switcheroo.

Cheers,
Will