[texworks] Using Lua Extension - to get LaTeX package help

[Paul A Norman]

Dear Reinhard,

Thank you for that backgrounder.

The hard work is being done by others, Jonathan, Stefan, Alain and others I
can not identify yet.

I am in the priviledged position of doing something very simple here,
applying a small piece of simplistic knowledge -- while myself riding on the
shoulders of giants!

Something very very simple, that produces a successful result ONLY because
of the HARD work of the others!

Paul

2009/9/20 Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>

> On 19 September 2009 Paul A Norman wrote:
>
>  > Dear Stefan,
>  >
>  > Thank you for that, it sparked something in my memory, and yes
>  > texdoc works under MiTeX on Windows as well.
>
> texdoc only depends on LuaTeX's Lua engine and should work on all
> systems which provide LuaTeX.
>
>  > My security fears are irrelevent I think unless "texdoc" is removed
>  > from the os.execute command string.
>
> That's true.
>
>  > I don't think package names are allowed to have spaces in them, is that
>  > right does any one know?
>
> This is a good question.  There are no packages with spaces in their
> name on CTAN yet and I assume that there will be none in the near
> future.  However, it's poor software design if spaces in file names
> are not supported.  Even more important are spaces in directory names
> because they can't always be avoided.
>
>  > Using texdoc may work on all/most distributions perhaps?
>
> Hopefully!  It's written in texlua for this reason.
>
> Paul, thank you very much for your work.  We (Jonathan, Manuel, and
> me) briefly discussed this feature at the TUG conference in Cork
> already, but TeXworks lacked a scripting engine at this time.  It's
> very nice to see that a texdoc interface became re ality.  I'm deeply
> grateful because this is a great feature and not only newcomers
> benefit from it.
>
> Another thing we discussed was to make Robin's FAQ accessible directly
> from TeXworks.  Jonathan prefers the HTML version of the FAQ because
> QT supports HTML already and for a few other reasons.  I don't know
> how much effort is necessary in order to make the QT HMTL interface
> accessible to Lua.  I also fear that it's necessary to "steal" some
> code from LuaTeX.  What I have in mind is the kpathsea interface.
>
> Stefan, you are my hero anyway.  A scripting language allows people to
> contribute easily without worrying about system quirks.  Paul already
> proved that this statement is correct.  No need to compile TeXworks
> again in order to add a new feature.  I'm very glad that you provided
> a scripting engine.  Thank you very much!
>
> Regards,
>  Reinhard
>
> --
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone:
> +49-511-3373112
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:
> reinhard.kotucha at web.de
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is
> NO.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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