[luatex] plain LuaTeX

[Robin Fairbairns]

Elie Roux <elie.roux at telecom-bretagne.eu> wrote:

> I have some discussions with Karl Berry, and we are confronted with an
> important issue:
> 
> Some additional macros are needed (or at least really logical to add)
> for plain, like (basically) \newattribute. The best thing (in my
> opinion) would be to put them in Plain, so that when the user calls
> 'luatex', these  macros are loaded, like the pdftex and etex
> macros. Do some people oppose this?

you can't "put <x> in plain" -- plain is under knuth's licence, and if
you add to it/otherwise change it, you change the name.

so you build a new format for "plain" luatex, the source of which loads
plain.tex and then does its own thing.

this is the way pdftex and xetex deal with the matter; for example,
pdftex.ini is

  \input pdftexconfig.tex
  \input plain
  \dump
  \endinput

robin