[tex-live] luatex defaults to dvi mode

David Kastrup dak at gnu.org
Mon Jun 30 08:07:30 CEST 2008


"Mojca Miklavec" <mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 11:54 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
>> karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) writes:
>>
>>>       I think Karl's intention was to have luatex produce DVI by default and
>>>     three symbolic links to it, with pdfluatex loading the plain format and
>>>     producing PDF,
>>>
>>> Right.  By analogy with tex/pdftex and latex/pdflatex.  However, if the
>>> LuaTeX crew prefers something like luatex/dviluatex, I won't insist,
>>> though I think the latter would be surprising to many people.
>>>
>>> We won't ever be able to change it again, so now is the time ...
>>
>> I'd vote against it.  At least AUCTeX (and presumably other TeX shells)
>> will prepend "pdf" to commands intended to produce PDF.
>
> Like pdfomega (pdflambda) and pdfXeTeX (pdfXeLaTeX) you mean? :P

Omega has no PDF mode, so AUCTeX does not allow similar use of PDF-mode
and  Omega-mode.  XeTeX is not yet supported in AUCTeX.  If we support
it, it will likely be similarly mode-locked.

Engines that do not even have a DVI/PDF choice can get along with a
fixed command.

> PS: sorry, only a provocation. DVI mode is probably problematic in
> LuaTeX as soon as one wants to use any reasonable fonts (it might even
> make sense to load OTF LM fonts by default for example), but I agree
> that luatex might be interesting for the sake of lua alone.

Most definitely.  That's why it would be very good to have a working
lualatex command in TeXlive2008 if we can manage it.  Even if it
interprets utf-8 input via [utf8]{inputenc} for now, namely as a sick
combination of active 8-bit characters.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


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