[luatex] Turning a string into a list of nodes.

[Paul Isambert]

Le 19/11/2010 10:33, Taco Hoekwater a écrit :
>  On 11/18/2010 09:52 PM, Paul Isambert wrote:
>>  Hello all,
>>
>>  I've been trying to devise a Lua function which, when fed a string,
>>  returns a
>>  list of nodes. The application I have in mind is line numbering,
>>  counting lines
>>  in the post_linebreak_filter and adding an \hbox with the number to
>>  lines that
>>  are a multiple of a given number. Everything should be done in Lua,
>>  and thus the
>>  counter must be converted to a list of nodes. I.e. the following
>>  should be
>>  possible:
>>
>>  mylist = string_tolist(tostring(linecounter))
>
>  This case is fairly straightforward, you could even prepare the 10
>  needed nodes in advance and then use node.copy() to chain them.
>
>>  And here come the questions: Have I missed a definitely simpler way
>>  to do what I
>>  want?
>
>  No, there is not. The simple reason for that is that it is an
>  exceedingly tricky function to write in the general case: the
>  luatex main control function has numerous side-effects and global
>  state variables at the moment, making it unsuitable for general use
>  on 'tex input', while on the other hand it seemed a shame to write a
>  'copy' of main control just for this.
>

So ignore my previous message. I'd thought it might be quite tricky indeed.

>  The 'pure ascii input' is simple enough to do in pure lua, as seen from
>  your own code and Patrick's.
>
>>     for item in node.traverse(head) do
>>       if item.next then
>>         -- If the second argument isn't there, LuaTeX crashes.
>>         node.kerning(item, item.next)
>>       end
>>     end
>
>  This is overdoing it, there is no need for a loop here. In fact,
>  the reason for it crashing in the lacking .next case is probably
>  because the list is getting modified inside of the loop.
>
>  You should be able to simply run
>
>     node.kerning(head)

Yes, the manual is quite clear, but for some reason I'd understood that
the function applied to its argument only instead of the entire nodelist.

Best,
Paul