What about a "LuaTeX for the Impatient"? Personally, I had my real first grasp at the depths of (La)TeX by browsing through Abrahams, Hargreaves, and Berry's "TeX for the Impatient". It is not a comprehensive reference (the TeXbook), or a detailed description (TeX by Topic), and it doesn't pretend to replace the tons of documentation for each individual macro package: it is rather a "manual", both an introduction and a quick reference book, without going too much into the details.
It would be enlightening to see how LuaTeX solves some of the difficult problems posed by The Impatient without performing the some of the weird somersaults required by TeX macros. It wouldn't be necessary to explain Lua (or Metapost) programming into much detail: just enough to get the jobs done. A first version in a wiki, simply filling in the blanks of the original Impatient, or providing alternative solutions in Lua instead of complicated TeX macros, would do the trick. Besides, the current WikiMedia software could produce the required PDF "book" out of the box. My penny thoughts, -- Luis Rivera O< http://www.asciiribbon.org/ campaign
