Definitions for LuaTeX

Definitions for LuaTeX

TeXLuaCATS-Repository: https://github.com/TeXLuaCATS/LuaTeX (upstream)

LuaCATS-Repository: https://github.com/LuaCATS/tex-luatex (downstream)

About the documented project

LuaTeX is a greatly extended version of pdfTeX using Lua as an embedded scripting language. The LuaTeX project’s main objective is to provide an open and configurable variant of TeX while at the same time offering substantive backward compatibility.

LuaTeX uses Unicode (as UTF-8) as its default input encoding, and is able to use modern (OpenType and TrueType) fonts (for both text and mathematics).¹

• PDF-Manual: luatex.pdf
• Repository: gitlab.lisn.upsaclay.fr/texlive/luatex
• CTAN: luatex
• LICENSE: GPL-2.0-or-later

References

• Corresponding C source code: source/texk/web2c/luatexdir
• Source file of the LuaTeX manual: manual
• Victor Eijkhout. “TeX by Topic” (1991, 2007): TeXbyTopic.pdf
• Donald Ervin Knuth. “The TexBook” (1984): TeX-Source PDF
• David Bausum. “TeX Reference Manual” (2002): cseq.html
• Donald Ervin Knuth. “TeX: The Program”: tex.pdf
• Corresponding fontforge C source code: github.com/fontforge/fontforge
• Hàn Thế Thành and others. The pdfTEX user manual, pdfTEX 1.40.27, February 12, 2025 pdftex-a.pdf

The description text can be or was taken from the official LuaTeX reference manual. In the project folder resources/manual you will find slightly edited Lua versions of the LuaTeX manual sources.

1. Preamble
2. Basic TEX enhancements
3. Modifications
4. Using LUATEX
5. Languages, characters, fonts and glyphs
6. Font structure
7. Math
8. Nodes
9. LUA callbacks
10. The TEX related libraries
11. The graphic libraries
12. The fontloader
13. The HarfBuzz libraries
14. The backend libraries

Footnotes

1. https://www.ctan.org/pkg/luatex ↩