[texworks] Using Lua Extension - to get LaTeX package help

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 19 September 2009 Paul A Norman wrote:

 > Dear Stefan,
 > 
 > Thank you for that, it sparked something in my memory, and yes
 > texdoc works under MiTeX on Windows as well.

texdoc only depends on LuaTeX's Lua engine and should work on all
systems which provide LuaTeX.

 > My security fears are irrelevent I think unless "texdoc" is removed
 > from the os.execute command string.

That's true.  
 
 > I don't think package names are allowed to have spaces in them, is that
 > right does any one know?

This is a good question.  There are no packages with spaces in their
name on CTAN yet and I assume that there will be none in the near
future.  However, it's poor software design if spaces in file names
are not supported.  Even more important are spaces in directory names
because they can't always be avoided.

 > Using texdoc may work on all/most distributions perhaps?

Hopefully!  It's written in texlua for this reason.

Paul, thank you very much for your work.  We (Jonathan, Manuel, and
me) briefly discussed this feature at the TUG conference in Cork
already, but TeXworks lacked a scripting engine at this time.  It's
very nice to see that a texdoc interface became re ality.  I'm deeply
grateful because this is a great feature and not only newcomers
benefit from it.

Another thing we discussed was to make Robin's FAQ accessible directly
from TeXworks.  Jonathan prefers the HTML version of the FAQ because
QT supports HTML already and for a few other reasons.  I don't know
how much effort is necessary in order to make the QT HMTL interface
accessible to Lua.  I also fear that it's necessary to "steal" some
code from LuaTeX.  What I have in mind is the kpathsea interface.

Stefan, you are my hero anyway.  A scripting language allows people to
contribute easily without worrying about system quirks.  Paul already
proved that this statement is correct.  No need to compile TeXworks
again in order to add a new feature.  I'm very glad that you provided
a scripting engine.  Thank you very much!

Regards,
  Reinhard

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