Am Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:19:15 +0100 schrieb Taco Hoekwater: >> Not just right now, but at any time in the future: if a new primitive >> \foo is introduced, any existing package that happens to use \foo is >> potentially affected. > > This is the best argument ever -- for not developing luatex at all. > > Until version luatex 1.0, we reserve the right to make any change. > Because if we were to promise not to remove old primitives and to > avoid adding conflicting primitives, you get exactly what you have > already: pdftex. Which isn't going away.
Naturally luatex can add new primitives (and should do it) like pdftex has done it. And you will never be able to avoid that such a new primitive clash somehow. But nevertheless I think it would be very useful if the names of the primitives would use an uniform prefix -- even more as luatex is not stable and new primitives can arise or disappear again. Prefixes like \pdf of pdftex and \XeTeX of xetex create a simple namespace and enable package writers to avoid _future_ conflicts with new primitives simply by not using the prefix. -- Ulrike Fischer
