Lua in TEX

doi:10.1016/j.cola.2025.101354

Lua in TEX

2025-09-01

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Hans Hagen *

DOI：10.1016/j.cola.2025.101354

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Abstract

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At the end of 2023 the Lua language celebrated its 30th anniversary and in that perspective I offered to wrap up our experiences with that language in the perspective of developing TEX follow ups called LuaTEX and LuaMetaTEX. I also discuss the interplay between them and ConTEXt, an advanced macro package for TEX. For those unfamiliar with TEX I start with an overview of what that system is. Because TEX cannot do much out of the box, users normally combine it with a so called macro package, such as Plain TEX, LATEX or ConTEXt, where the later one is what I use and whose developers also drove the development of LuaTEX and LuaMetaTEX. The usage of Lua was a natural choice due to its performance and easiness to integrate, beyond the fact that Lua is independent of additional resources. To illustrate the discussion, I present examples that show the interaction between TEX and Lua.

Keywords:

Lua

TeX

ConTeXt

LuaTeX

LuaMetaTeX

Lua in TEX

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