[luatex] Luatex primitive names

[Hans Hagen]

Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
> 
> [cogent arguments omitted]
> 
>> BTW, from the experience of the history of pdfTeX, I would like
>> some version information in the LuaTeX manual:
>> * Mapping \luatexversion -> official LuaTeX version number
>> * Version information for each feature/primitive, when
>>   it was introduced and when changes occur.
>> It would help macro programmers to write robuster code
>> without studying old announcements and logs of the version control
>> system.
> 
> fwiw, i agree (with all of it).  the trouble is, it's not me that has to
> be persuaded, it's taco.  unfortunately, taco has said that there's no
> point attempting backwards compatibility on a beta; he apparently
> believes that such small additions to his workload are enough to rule
> them out.
> 
> which is sad.  i've experienced this sort of pressure, from (as it were)
> taco's side, in the past (i don't do much software development any
> more).  i know one has to draw a line somewhere, but i am sad that
> taco's line isn't where _i_ believe is the ideal.

in the case of luatex it's not so much a problem ...

(1) we explicitly state that everything is beta till v 1.00 or till 
declared otherwise

(2) luatex is not production ready so no one should depend on it unless 
at own risk

(3) pdftex was also a moving target but nicely cached on anyway

(4) the solution that we proposed with regards to primitives solves the 
latex profixing problem (afaik)

(5) there is a way to test the engine \directlua (and maybe 
\luatexversion is that is really needed)

(6) some features that influence the output [hyphenation, math etc] will 
be backward compatible as much as possible within the rewrite but we 
don't want to be crippled too much; after all there is xetex (which is 
dependent on libraries that are probably out of the tex communities 
control] or there is pdftex (which can serve users for ever esp when 
they only use cmr/lm fonts)

so, i'm not sure what critital backward compatibility you're refering to


Hans

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