[texworks] adding luatex and lualatex to the typesetting menu

Arno Trautmann Arno.Trautmann at gmx.de
Thu Jul 14 17:39:45 CEST 2011


Hi,

Stefan Löffler wrote:
> On 2011-07-13 21:38, Arno Trautmann wrote:
>> No, superseding will definitely not happen in the next years.
>> Maybe a possible improvement would be to offer some kind of drop-down
>> menu that separates engines from formats. So one could take LaTeX or
>> plain or ConTeXt and then choose between pdf, dvi, lua, dvilua, /or/
>> Mk II, Mk IV, …
>
> I think that's an excellent idea. First, because it implicitly teaches
> users that distinction from the very beginning, and second because it
> gets some order into the current chaos on that dropdown list.
> Unfortunately, there are some caveats as well. First, it's not easy to
> implement with the current approach/widgets, and second we need to take
> care to maintain compatibility with TeXShop and older versions of Tw
> (that might be using a "%!TeX program=" modline).

Well, I don't “care” about implementation, as I have no idea how to do 
it anyway …
But how would you handle bibtex (or biber, if we are talking about next 
generation programs) or indexing tools? Maybe a button “typeset” and 
anotherone with anything else? But that will bloat up the typesetting area …

> Anyway, it would be great if you could post a feature request for this
> on GC.

Is that possible without a Google Account? Elsewise some else has to do 
it, sorry …

>>> On another point: people should realize early on that TeXworks is not
>>> their distribution (I know they don't, but still the should ;)). That
>>> said, there are uncountably many tools that people could install, either
>>> officially through their distro, or manually, but providing access to
>>> all of them by default defeats the purpose of Tw to provide a simple
>>> editor. So, I guess it all comes down to the question: what does the
>>> majority of new users expect to use? And what does the majority of new
>>> users have installed by default (this includes average or even minimal
>>> distro installations, not just the "full" variant)?
>>
>> I'm not sure, but LuaTeX should be in every minimal variant. However,
>> it is the designated pdfTeX successor, so it has some kind of a
>> special role.
>
> OK, unless someone else has good reasons not to (and usually I'm the
> most cautious/pessimistic on this list ;)), let's add it to the default
> engines (seeing that it seems to be the future of TeX?).

It can only become the future if many people use it, and most people use 
what their editor offers them.

> So, next
> question, what is the correct way of calling Lua(La)TeX (including the
> SyncTeX option, of course)? And are there any platform-specific
> differences that would need to be taken into account?

I call it with

lualatex --shell-escape -file-line-error $synctexoptions $fullname

shell-escape should be disabled by default, I guess. However, another 
feature request would be an easy way to de/activate shell-escape. (I'm 
not sure if MiKTeX uses --shell-escape or something else.)
-file-line-error gives better error messages and should work on every 
platform, but I can only speak for TeX live 2010 on Linux, Windows and 
Mac OS X.

>>> PS: I have to confess I'm not up to speed with all the engines out
>>> there, especially when it goes in the direction of XeTeX or ConTeXt.
>>> That's also why I might ask seemingly stupid questions ;).
>>
>> Maybe this document might help a bit – that's exactly the reason I
>> started it for:
>> https://github.com/alt/tex-overview/blob/master/tex-overview.pdf
>> (click on “View Raw”)
>> For ConTeXt, it is quite easy, as Mk IV (the latest version) only uses
>> LuaTeX.
>
> Thanks, this is great! I actually never knew there were that many
> engines and formats out there... ;).

I fear I still haven't covered everything …
Besides, the document should be distributed with TeX live (and also 
MiKTeX?) as package tex-overview.

cheers
Arno


More information about the texworks mailing list