[lltx] luaotfload maintenance

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Sat, 16 Jun 2012 20:38:22 +0200 schrieb Patrick Gundlach:

>> I want that all formats which use this code in the font callback
>> have at the end an extended, powerfull \font-command with clear
>> syntax and known features. 

> that's my goal as well (luaotfload does that).

luaotfload does it only partly. 

As an example: I'm interested in "virtual lua fonts", that means
some lua-code which describes a font build by getting (and
reordering) glyphs from other real fonts and which can be loaded
like a real font with the \font command. At some time it could be
done in context (and so also with luaotfload when it was in sync)
but you had to use undocumented internal functions with not garanty
that they didn't change the next day and there wasn't a sane way to
set up the search pathes for such fonts. It is no fun to develop
only such ad-hoc solutions. 

If more than one person or a small team should be involved in a
project it is not enough to have powerful code you need also
(publicitly available) code documentation, interfaces and layer
definitions (as it is done in the latex3 project). 


-- 
Ulrike Fischer