[DVIPDFMx] 2010 engine plan

[Taco Hoekwater]

Karl Berry wrote:
> 
> That leaves LuaTeX.  Taco, what should we aim for shipping in 2010, and
> when?  (And let's be sure that we update context and luatex in TL at the
> same time this year, so context mkiv stands a chance.)


For luatex itself, the two major plans for 0.60 are
  1. go back to Cweb (or something similar) from plain C
  2. consolidate binary lua module loading
unfortunately, it is likely both will affect the build process

Point 1 still needs a decision to be made (use cweb, use doxygen, or
write something ourselves), I expect that decision to be made in this
month, and the initial implementation to follow a few weeks later.

Point 2 has unsolved issues with the use of the lua core, which
really should become a dynamic, private dll to avoid problems between
the lua core symbols use by such external modules  and luatex's
embedded (patched) lua core symbols. I am not too thrilled about
implementing this, so I have postponed it until now. (a longer, more
technical email about this will follow in a few days)

There are some other things planned for luatex 0.60, but those
are relatively minor and, most importantly, wont affect the build
process much. So once the two point above are resolved, the code
could go into the TL repository. Sounds like end of March would
be doable for that.

Meanwhile, don't forget metapost, massive amounts of work going on
there. But metapost 2 will not be finished before early summer (at
the very earliest), so I guess the best solution is to stick with
metapost 1.2 in TL 2010, and possibly also include a pre-release of
metapost 2, if anything release-able is ready in time.

I think actually it would help if you set straight deadlines
for code submissions, that way I can reschedule the development
work to match those. Both metapost and luatex are actively
developed: there is a never a point where there are no great
changes planned.

Best wishes,
Taco