[luatex] combining files with pure LuaTeX

[Patrick Gundlach]

> My questions now are the following:
> 
> -Is it possible to run the standalone LuaTeX binary so that executes pure Lua scripts with no need of format files or such?

yes. both texlua and luatex can be used without any additional files from a TeX distribution. You might need to supply your own scripts, of course.

texlua is for executing Lua scripts
luatex is for executing TeX files

You can run texlua by calling luatex with --luaonly (if I remember correctly)

> -Is it possible to generate a new PDF document from am existing one with imposed images in LuaTeX using only Lua code?

Yes, but that's quite a lot of work. You need some TeX glue to start the Lua mode if you want to create a PDF.

> 
> -The foreground PDF image contains the current date. Would possible to generate the current date for the image within the Lua script having the rest of the image already generated and before being imposed to the background image?

Yes, if you know the position where the date should appear.


LuaTeX is well suited for this kind of task, but it seems that there is a lot of setup/programming necessary to achieve this. Perhaps there are better tools for that task?

Patrick