[Dev-luatex] Some questions

[Hans Hagen]

Jonathan Sauer wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> trying out the LuaTeX snapshot 20070820, I have a couple of questions:
> 
> - Is it safe to add to the LuaTeX library tables (tex, callback), i.e.
>   a callback.push function? Or should these support functions have
>   their own table? ("callback_utils")

you can indeed use those tables as any table, i.e.

function tex.mystuff()
	...
end

is legal

however, there is no guarantee that future versions of luatex will not 
use the same names as you do; even if (widespread) macropackages will 
have their tex.myfunction spread all over the world, future luatex's may 
define its own myfunction in the tex namespace; of course one can save 
its meaning before redefining it; so ... it is possible but may have 
future side effects

> - How do I generate an error when inside Lua code? I could use
>   tex.write("\\errmessage{...}"), but then the error would only be
>   generated after the Lua code has finished executing, and after
>   any TeX code created previously using tex.write et.al. has
>   been executed.

- assert
- just print messages using texio.write_nl
- os.exit() also works

> - How do I access control sequences from Lua code? If I have a
>   macro \test, how would I get the tokens of this macro when inside
>   Lua? (without passing them from TeX) Is there a table tex.macro,
>   just like the tex.count, tex.toks etc. tables?

no, you print them to tex using tex.print and tex.sprint; you're either 
is lua or in tex; something in between would become extremely messy

Hans


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