[luatex] Outdated Website

[Hans Hagen]

On 12/5/2013 11:01 PM, Jan Tosovsky wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> this great project would deserve more frequent updates of the
> website/roadmap...
>
> Now there is 0.77 out, but on this page we can still read:
> http://www.luatex.org/roadmap.html
>
> * Our current estimate is that we will provide version 1.0 in 2012 around
> TeX's 32th birthday

As we want to go as bit further that planned originally, that was more 
version 0.50 and the timeline was stretched. So, versions from 0.50 were 
more or less production ready. Okay, we could follow the bibtex version 
numbering and forever stay at 0.99 but eventually we will have a 1.00 
(maybe at the 10th context meeting which then also is about 10 years of 
luatex dev).

> But e.g. here it is stated
> http://www.luatex.org/svn/trunk/manual/luatexref-t.pdf:
> Currently we expect the 1.0 release to happen in spring 2014

That will come a few years later.

> But more important for me is the fulfillment of original objectives.
> However, their statuses seem to be outdated. I would be grateful for any
> update mainly in this area.

There will be a 0.80 (so 0.85 for texlive 2014) around the end of the 
year, then I'll update the pages. Maybe 0.90 end of next year (and 0.95 
texlive 2015).

> And this is from the Welcome page:
> The latest stable release is 0.60 (April 2010) and we regularly post betas
> (the 0.65 beta is also quite useable).

Thanks for noticing.

> Generally, there is just several pages on this website and not much of text
> so I wouldn't expect big difficulties with the maintenance...

I'll have a look at it. Keep in mind that the website was mostly there 
to advertise luatex bit when we started. Nowadays it's in distributions 
so the updates are slower (a beta followed by a stable) and sync with 
the yearly texlive updates. Regular updates are reported in articles in 
tex user group magazines and on tex related meetings.

> Thanks, Jan
>
> Btw, I also suggest slightly enhanced wording in the Welcome page - from
> user benefit perspective:
> Instead of 'LuaTeX is an extended version of pdfTeX using Lua as an embedded
> scripting language' with history and technical data to mention rather:
> LuaTeX is unique command line PDF converter offering high quality
> typographic outputs comparable with Adobe InDesign, but with no costs. While

We deliberately avoid such comparisons if only because tex as macro 
processor is something different than a gui based system. And I'm pretty 
sure that there are areas where ID is better than TEX and reverse. Also, 
I've seen so much bad ID as well as TEX output that one can never make 
such a claim without mentioning that the user is responsible.

> it takes only raw TeX82 format as an input, when bundled with ConTeXt, TeX
> macropackage, higher level of abstraction can be utilized in your source
> documents. It supports Unicode, OpenType fonts, RTL and bi-di writing
> directions, inserting PDF or SVG files to mention a few...

Although the luatex project is closely related to context, we don't put 
functionality in the engine that is macro package specific (and never 
will). Although for sure context mkiv I slots of lua and depends on 
luatex, any macro package can use luatex as engine. To what extend the 
functionality you mention is supported of course depends on the macro 
package.

Anyway, when I update I'll see what I can do,

Hans


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