[luatex] Lua is removing hyperbolic functions

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2014-07-18 at 19:27:14 +0200, Dirk Laurie wrote:

 > 2014-07-18 3:25 GMT+02:00 Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de>:
 > 
 > > But I'm wondering why one wants to remove the hyperbolic
 > > functions at all.  Don't they work properly?  If the sole purpose
 > > is to make the math library as small as possible, I think that
 > > it's better to disable the code instead of removing it.  What I
 > > have in mind is something like "#ifdef HYPERBOLIC" or similar.
 > > The code can be re-activated easily then.  Or are the hyperbolic
 > > functions too hard to maintain?
 > 
 > Roberto Ierusalimschy has given two reasons.
 > 
 > 1. "I must confess that I did an entire course of Eletrical
 > Engineering and have no recollection of ever met them."
 > <http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2014-04/msg00144.html>
 > 
 > 2. "In other words, the main reason for removing those functions
 > were not to gain 500 bytes, but to increase conceptual integrity."
 > <http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2014-07/msg00384.html>

Hi Dirk,
thank you very much for clarification.

Since Hans already said that stuff removed from Lua can be kept in
LuaTex, I'm not concerned any more.

As an electrical engineer I can confirm that hyperbolic functions are
rarely needed, if at all.  Mathematicians might have different
requirements.

As far as math is concerned, I'm convinced that the results of Luigi's
research are quite promising.  His idea is to make external programs
accessible to LuaTeX via shared libraries.  Luigi's talk at BachoTeX
2011 was extremely impressive:

  http://www.guitex.org/home/images/ArsTeXnica/AT011/AT11-scarso.pdf

For the record, I once used hyperbolic functions within a LuaLaTeX
file in order to demonstrate how complex things can be done easily
with LuaTeX.  The sole purpose of this file is to motivate TeX users
to consider to explore LuaTeX:

  http://tug.org/~kotucha/luatab.pdf

It's a matter of fact that if a program offers a particular function
then you can be sure that people make use of it. :)

After all, I believe in Luigi's approach and hope that many libraries
will be available in the near future.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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