[luatex] macros to invoke lua in LaTeX

[Hans Hagen]

Karl Berry wrote:
>       If I remember correctly, the original idea was to add "pdf" in front
>     of all the primitives that were particular to pdfTeX, and it thus meant
>     "pdfTeX" and not "PDF", at least originally (am I right?)  But it is
>     indeed not the most intuitive naming convention.
> 
> Maybe not intuitive in all cases, but very very useful for preventing
> clashes.  The LuaTeX practice of choosing names for primitives that are
> meaningful, but without any such prefix, seems quite problematic to me.
> Not just right now, but at any time in the future: if a new primitive
> \foo is introduced, any existing package that happens to use \foo is
> potentially affected.  Sure, it can be worked around, but it introduces
> unnecessary instability and incompatibility, it seems to me.
> 
> Sorry to be such a drag.

no package is infected at all as the package redefined the new primitives

however, the macro package that loads the package should provide an 
alternative name for the new functionality then (or use the \primitive 
prefix)

\let\originalwhatever=\whatever

and then use \originalwhatever instead consistently; the \original 
prefix then could be made a 'norm' in the macro package (e.g. context 
users know that they should not mess around with \normalwhatever)

when etex came around, its new primitives clashes with several of 
context's and even recently there was a new primitive (\expanded) that 
clashed again but it's no big deal (well, i've learned to live with it)

concerning a prefix ... pdf backends were possible before pdftex came 
around so \pdfsomething can also clash with existing macros; the same is 
true for many systematically prefixed primitives

so ... whatever solution is choses, it always can fail at some point 
which is why we didn't do it

Hans

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