[OS X TeX] TeXShop 2.34

[Josep Maria Font]

On Jun 3, 2010, at 3:25 PM, Per Ting wrote:

> What is LuaTeX and what does it offer to LaTeX? Is it a series of Macros like LaTeX or ConText?

And on 04/06/2010, at 01:26, David Arnold replied:

> http://www.luatex.org/

I was interested, too, so I tried this site. However, it seems not to be particularly user-friendly, but rather aimed at developers. All it tells me when they want to explain what LuaTeX is, is:

> LuaTeX is an extended version of pdfTeX using Lua as an embedded scripting language. 

and

> We needed a language that matched all of the following criteria:
[snip]
> Lua was the first language to match all the criteria. The known scripting languages tend to be much too large for our use. Specifically, we have rejected Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme on one or more of those criteria.

As a 20-years experienced (La/AmS/plain)TeX user I have never had to use any of these languages, so there must be something for insiders here.

So, can anyone tell, in simple words, what a *user* should know about LuaTeX ? Thanks a lot!


JMaF