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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label luatex</title>
</head><body>
-<h3>PDFTeX becomes LuaTeX</h3>
+<h3>PDFTeX and LuaTeX</h3>
<p/>As is said elsewhere in these FAQs, development of
<a href="FAQ-whatpdftex.html">PDFTeX</a> is &ldquo;in essence&rdquo; complete &mdash;
-development of new facilities continues, but the limitations of the
-present structure impose a strong limit on what facilities are
-possible. (The PDFTeX team has announced that no further
+no new facilities are being developed, since the limitations of the
+present structure mean that the returns on effort invested are
+diminishing. The PDFTeX team has announced that no further
developments will be added after the release of PDFTeX 1.50.0,
-which will be the next major release.)
-<p/>In this context, the idea of LuaTeX arose.
+which will be the next major release.
+<p/>In parallel with the running-down of PDFTeX development,
+development of a new system, LuaTeX is under way.
<a href="http://www.lua.org/"><i>Lua</a></i> is a script
-language, designed to offer an interpreter with a very small
-&ldquo;footprint&rdquo;, so it is rather easy to build it into other
-applications. So LuaTeX was launched as a PDFTeX
-executable with a <i>Lua</i> interpreter built into it.
-<p/>A <a href="http://www.luatex.org/">LuaTeX project</a> is now proceeding
-(with monetary support from various sources) and is pursuing avenues
-that many of the other
+language, designed to offer an interpreter that may be incorporated
+into other applications. LuaTeX consists of a TeX-like engine
+with a <i>lua</i> interpreter built into it; the <i>lua</i>
+interpreter has access to many of the data structures used for
+typesetting, and the user may also interpolate chunks of
+<i>lua</i> code into their (La)TeX macros, or as &lsquo;call-backs&rsquo;
+for use when the TeX-like engine does certain operations.
+<p/>This arrangement offers the prospect of a &ldquo;semi-soft&rdquo; typesetting
+engine: it will have its basic behaviour, but the user gets to
+redefine functionality if an idea occurs &mdash; there will be no need to
+persuade the world first, and then find a willing developer to work on
+the sources of of the distribution.
+<p/>The <a href="http://www.luatex.org/">LuaTeX project</a> is (with monetary
+support from various sources) pursuing avenues that many of the other
current projects have in their sights, notably Unicode character
-representations and support for OpenType fonts. Work is also in hand
+representations and support for OpenType fonts. The intention is
to integrate the extensions pioneered by <a href="FAQ-omegaleph.html">Aleph</a>.
-<p/>The next release of TeX Live (due in July 2008) and MiKTeX
-version 2.8 (no current release date) will incorporate LuaTeX.
-ConTeXt distributions can already make use of it.
+<p/>A release of LuaTeX whose functionality is declared (version 0.50)
+has recently appeared. TeX Live 2008 incorporates an early release
+of LuaTeX, and the upcoming MiKTeX version 2.8 (no current
+release date) will probably incorporate LuaTeX. ConTeXt
+distributions can already make use of LuaTeX.
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=luatex">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=luatex</a>
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