On 5/27/2019 6:49 PM, Marcel Fabian Krüger wrote:
either, but I will just mention it anyway: Would it maybe be a option to
provide access to the token list of macros instead? Meaning some variant
of `get_macro/set_macro` which allows setting/getting the token list as
returned by token.scan_toks(true, -)? This wouldn't affect any old code
and not have any speciall effect for the TeX side, but would make
working with macros from Lua much easier, especially if they contain too
inconsistant (or unknown) catcodes to make going through a string
representation a viable option. It would e.g. allow doing this `#` stuff
through Lua, atomic replacements in existing macros and creating macros
with more "creative" catcodes from Lua code without requiring having to
go through odd `\def` constructions. Giving that the internal argument
list representation is exposed through scan_toks anyway, it looks like a
quite small and consistant change.
Hm, not in the short term I think, but i'll keep it in mind. There's all
kind of stuff going on like triggers and sentinels for arguments and ref
counting and so. I also think that going too wild with lua is not a good
idea. The node interface is already adding quite some fragility. The
get/setmacro are actually kind of strange. One can do a lot at the tex
end and if it can't be done it's probabbly also not well suited for tex.
Messing with creative catcodes is no option as there is just a limited
set with prescribed and often hard coded behaviour.
The whole define and expand machinery is very optimized and cannot be
made much better in terms of performance, only worse and that is no
option. Writing for instance that kind of stuff in lua (or adding
callbacks) makes not much sense because when performance drops
significantly tex basically becomes unuseable.
fwiw: I've done all kind of experiments the last decade, also like the
ones you suggest above, and rejected mosty because of messyness,
weirdness and bordercaseness. At some point one (i can't speak for all
of course) decides that there is not that much more to gain. In fact, if
we remove (or bypass) some of the peculiar tex macro things one
basically makes tex into something different ... some of its charm is in
its weirdness ... i would have quit using it already long ago if that
weren't the case. Of course I play with possible new things but it has
to prove itself in usage and looking-kind-of-normaal (I admit that in
luatex some things were added that don't honor that principle but
removing that now is no option I think, although I have no problems
kicking out strange stuff in the follow up that I experiment with in
context.)
Hans
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