[texworks] Lua scripting

[Jérome Laurens]

Le 14 juin 09 à 23:45, Reinhard Kotucha a écrit :

> On 14 June 2009 Jérome Laurens wrote:
>
>> Things are not that simple.
>>
>> TeXWorks natural audience is the beginner in TeX, and most probably  
>> in
>> scripting too. [...]
>
> I never had in mind that users should be bothered with scripting at
> all.  They should neither be forced nor encouraged to write their own
> scripts or to install arbitrary scripts they find in the internet.

[...]

This point of view is definitely valuable, and one can add that the  
users should not be bothered with the underlying xetex, luatex,  
pdftex, latex, context neither.

In fact, there are 2 different approaches

1) TeXWorks lowers the barrier to entry and nothing else
2) TeXWorks also adapts to the user need

This discussion about scripting (and indirectly plugins) is related to  
point 2.
If we restrict ourselves to point 1, then there is nothing to add.

My opinion is that we should have (in a longer term) TeXWorks for  
point 1 and TeXWorks pro for point 2.
Both should have exactly the same underlying code (with very few  
branching points), but the first one would have a very simple user  
interface (no scripting for example).
When people feel limited with TeXWorks, they just "switch" to TeXWorks  
pro.

The idea is clearly to use TeXWorks as a de facto standard to impose  
good practices to both users and front ends designers.
One of the biggest problems for example is document sharing. In  
theory, tex documents are portable but it is not true for just the one  
you absolutely need now.
Clearly, a document is not complete without some kind of "configure/ 
make" setup to describe how it can be successfully typeset on your  
system.
If TeXWorks defines some design to ensure full portability of  
documents it creates, the other apps will adopt this design.
In fact, this design can be done at the TeXLive level but TeXWorks  
would make a proof of concept.

Another problem is the plethora of auxiliary files created by the  
typesetting process.
They participate to the feeling of unnecessary complexity related to  
TeX.
Those are also things that the user should not be bothered with, at  
least newbies.
A general "build" folder policy would be welcome.

BTW, a plugin to manage versioning would be very useful...
Anyway, the question is not to provide -now- any of these possibilities,
the question is more not to prevent now an eventual forthcoming  
implementation of these features.

Jerome