[luatex] lua equivalent of vbox...ht

[Patrick Gundlach]

>>
>> Is it even possible to write this in Lua? I need to invoke the line  
>> breaking
>> algorithm at some time, how do I do this in Lua?
>
> Write "what" ?

\setbox0\vbox{long text that breaks into lines}

and immediately afterwards get the dimensions of this box 0


> Yes, it's possible to write lua code for this
> \setbox0\vbox{hello world}
> \the\ht0
>
> but it's longer than the two lines before -- AFAIK  you must build
> each node by hands
> and pack into a vbox (I don't remember how to pack nodes in vlist )
> and then print.
>
> I don't know how to invoke line break algo.
> In my opinion
> \setbox100=\vbox{\hsize=5cm \input tufte }
> is much clearer then basic lua code
> You  need some lua layer -- maybe there is something in context base  
> folder.

I am not asking which version is clearer :)

I want to know if this can be done without any TeX code at all.

Patrick