avoiding new extensions?

[kberry]

Hi Luis - before I install blopentype in TeX Live, let me ask about the possibility of avoiding the new extensions (.ltx and .ltm) that you invented. Every new extension means more infrastructure setup, more confusion about "what does it mean", etc. There are already far too many LuaTeX-related extensions, so adding more for a couple of files seems suboptimal.

How about just blot-files-mac.lua and blot-fonts-script.lua, etc., if you want to make the distinction? I don't really understand what you mean by "scripts", either. Clearly they are not executables for the command line. (Which I am glad about. :)

THanks.

[jarnowic]

Hello!

One thing I liked from Isambert's approach was to distinguish "regular" .tex files (which may run even in DEKTeX) from LuaTeX macros (which do include Lua code), on the one hand, and "regular" .lua code (which may make up regular Lua "modules", if indeed there is such a thing: lua was designed precisely to work as a "scripting" language for other programs) from Lua code specifically tied to LuaTeX.

So the extensions .ltm and .lts were devised to mark precisely this distinction: LuaTeX macros (for the TeX side) and LuaTeX scripts (for the Lua side). It did not occur to me that these "scripts" could be interpreted as "executables"; perhaps code (LuaTeX code: .ltc) would have been a better choice. The distinction came to my mind from the several Perl extensions: px for executables, pl for libraries, pm for modules, and so forth.

I guess the TeXLive objection comes from the need to cater for these new filename extensions by kpathsea: in that case, I have no problem in renaming the files to tex and lua, respectively (the filenames don't intersect).

[jarnowic]

Done.

[kberry]

Thanks for renaming the files. If you push a new release to CTAN, I'll go ahead and put it into TL. I understand your (and Isambert's) point of view. From my point of view, it's a feature, not a bug, to use the same extension for "regular" macros and Lua-related macros, and everything else too. It's the usual question of lumping vs. splitting ... You don't need to have any particular directory structure (is that what you meant by "branches"?) for the .tex and .lua files. I can just put all the runtime files (your luatex/ subdir) in a single directory tex/luatex/blopentype. That would be the simplest, and IMHO make the files easiest to find (by users; kpathsea doesn't care :). All the best, karl

[jarnowic]

hello! the ctan team just pushed the fix into the archive without an announcement, per my request, as we just reset the initial release and the versioning system: you may check it in 24 h or so. cheers!

[kberry]

Hi Luis - I just imported it into TL for tonight's update. Thanks for putting up with me :). -k