Re: new version luatex / mkiv

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Wolfgang Werners-Lucchini wrote:
> On 12 Apr 2008 at 12:00, ntg-context-request@ntg.nl wrote:
> 
> Hallo Taco,
> 
>> Real API documentation will be provided once I am past the "alpha"
>> release stage. At the moment, I do not trust the API enough to
>> expose it to anything except controlled environments (lua mplib,
>> newmpost)
>>
>>>> Isn't mplib a dll under windows?
>> It is possible to build the unix version as a .so because support
>> for that comes from autofoo automatically, but that is not yet
>> officially supported: debugging dynamic libraries is harder than 
>> debugging static code.
> 
> On the other side, it is very easy to replace a dll by a new version, 
> if the interface stays stable.

sure, but it also introduced unneeded mails on support lists of users 
who mix up things; we'd probably end up with the same situation as kpse 
... mplib234.dll and so, which does not improve things either

> If there is more than one program, which is using mplib, you have to 
> update all theses programs, if you make some mplib changes.

indeed, but contrary to tex livem where all binaries are updated in 
sync, for moving targets like luatex we want to be sure that things 
match; disk space is cheap, and telling user to download 'this' and 
'that' and put 'such' and 'so' in locations 'here' and 'there' is more 
trouble than let them just download one binary etc

> But I think that a dll could very much boost the metapost usage. It 
> would than be very easy to write third party software.

maybe, but that is independent of being used in luatex and mpost itself; 
as taco mentioned, there it will be staticaly linked, just as lua and 
its libs

Hans

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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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