[luatex] a question about the names \Umathcharnumdef etc

[Hans Hagen]

On 10/16/2015 11:41 AM, jfbu wrote:

 > ...

as mantioned already, it's more a latex issue than an luatex one, but as 
you say:

> Well, my package does tell people they need LuaLaTeX from TL2013 or later,
> and the latest modification impacting the package did
> not come from an evolution of the engine, but from LaTeX 2015/10/01.

but luatex is evolving ... it could be that luatex 0.81 doesn't work for 
code that hasn't be adapted (for instance, some \pdf primitives were 
promoted to core ones, so then the core macros used have to do something 
\let\pdfoo = \whatisnowfoo in it wants to be compatible)

> In principle, I understand your point, but LuaTeX having been
> part of the TeX landscape for many years now, it is hard to view
> it as a constantly developing engine needing the package authors
> to support only the latest version and telling the users to adapt...

the stable snapshots of luatex are the tex live versions and at that 
point the macro packages should be new-version aware; for intermediate 
versions you need to make sure that your old code is not conflicting 
with changes ... simply replacing a binary is dangerous (we're not 
talking of bug fixes here, but of evolution)

so, normally developers should update locally and check things ... for a 
eco system like tex it's not that natural to immediately update binaries 
and certain packages esp when they depend on each other (the same is 
true for fonts and patterns) ... regular users should lag months behind 
developers (or just take the risk of compatibility issues)

> .... as I personally was stuck for many years with a laptop on which I
> would not install TeXLive 2011 or later, and although
> owner of a Mac I could not use xetex (for reasons I have forgotten)
> I am aware that software requirements may induce hardware incompatibilities,
> and actually a lot of the computer business makes it money from that.

luatex should run on any recently modern machine (with decent memory, 
and when using lua a decent cpu cache etc)

> If the package was truly exploiting LuaTeX, the matter would be
> a bit otherwise, but here it is just a question of having a minimum
> of compatibility with Unicode,

afaiks it doesn't relate to unicode but to using the right primitives of 
macros ... one problem with newer binaries is that one can have to 
re-read the manual

Hans

ps. depending on what you use 0.82 will also bring some changes but 
david cum suis will make sure that the latex core code is ready for that

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