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I'd like to know why XeTeX hasn't (yet?) replaced other engines that lack features we take as granted in modern computing, like support for Unicode and modern font formats.

Is there any important downside in using XeTeX? Why would I want to use, say, pdfTeX instead?

EDIT: I wasn't asking for an overview on all the engines out there, but rather for precise reasons for why I wouldn't want to use XeTeX, since from my European perspective Unicode support is kind of a big deal. I work on a daily basis with documents in German, Italian and Czech, languages where non-ASCII characters are pretty common. I gave up on LaTeX for years before finding out that with XeTeX I didn't have to painfully remember to hardcode every ß, ü or š I needed to use (which were a lot).

Also, as a type-lover I like to experiment with typefaces in my documents, so easy support for OTF and TTF fonts is a very nice thing to have in my opinion, a feeling I expected others to share.

Not having such features is a deal-breaker for me, and was genuinely looking for reasons on why would someone choose to use an engine other than XeTeX.

mrzool
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    A simple reason might be that XeTeX uses different syntax for certain thing, e.g. something else than \usepackage IIRC. So switching from LaTeX to XeTeX would require changing existing documents. Don't forget that you can use unicode in LaTeX as well, at least to a certain extent. And when it comes to fonts, most people seem to be happy with what LaTeX provides -- this is the case for me at least. I do not want to worry about fonts and about how they go together. I take what is set up in my favorite documentclass, because the guy who wrote it, knows more about it than me. – Philipp Imhof Aug 31 '15 at 12:07
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    perhaps because you have 30 years of tex documents in an archive and don't want to change formatter that may or may not work on your existing documents, or you want to generate pdf directly (and manipulate it with \pdfliteral) that is hard to do in a dvi based system or you are an english speaking mathematician who has never heard of unicode or xetex or ... The last part of your question is a duplicate of questions we already have detailing the differences between pdftex/xetex/luatex, the first part "why" is unanswerable. – David Carlisle Aug 31 '15 at 12:12
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    @PhilippImhof XeLaTeX understands very well \usepackage. – egreg Aug 31 '15 at 12:16
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    @egreg: Thank you. I seem to have mixed that up with ConTeXt, after having read something about that in the TikZ manual a while ago. – Philipp Imhof Aug 31 '15 at 12:26
  • I can use all the unicode characters I (normally) need with pdfTeX and not worry about some of the complications XeTeX brings. (And now I've even got Welsh characters working properly.) There are things you can do with pdfTeX - including things with fonts - which are difficult, if not impossible, with XeTeX. – cfr Aug 31 '15 at 12:32
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    The main reason for me to stick with pdfTeX is microtype support :) – cgnieder Aug 31 '15 at 12:33
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    I like pdfTeX for its compilation times. – 1010011010 Aug 31 '15 at 22:45
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    For font experiments, I now prefer LuaTeX to XeTeX when possible, because it understands more \pdf... commands. Speed, microtype, TikZ and custom font configurations mean I use pdfTeX for everything serious, though. But I only really need English, Welsh and odd words/phrases from Greek and other languages. I never use command macros for accented characters etc., though (except in maths) or for Greek words (except in maths). I input all those directly as unicode, which works fine for me in pdfTeX (except ŵ, ŷ¸ Ŵ and Ŷ are not supported out-of-the-box). LuaTeX is tempting, though.... – cfr Aug 31 '15 at 23:51
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    Actually, I use via the externalize-command LuaLaTeX to plot measured values etc.. – jlk Sep 01 '15 at 00:30
  • @DavidCarlisle, I'm reading around on the matter and from what I understand, XeTeX has the ability to output PDFs directly, in fact, this is the only option, since DVI is not supported. From your comment I understood the contrary. I'm going to edit my question to reflect this. – mrzool Sep 02 '15 at 12:07
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    @zool No, XeTeX directly generates an extended form fo DVI called xdv, which is (usually) converted directly to PDF by xdvipdfmx. This is much more like the DVI route with pdfTeX than the PDF route. – Joseph Wright Sep 02 '15 at 12:10
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    In your clarified question you say you use Unicode for European letters. actually pdflatex and inputenc package work quite well for that, it is different if you are using large Asian encodings where the 256 characters per font restriction in classic means that xetex or luatex have massive advantage. – David Carlisle Sep 02 '15 at 12:15
  • @JosephWright Ok, then I guess I'll just delete the point regarding PDF vs DVI output, since it seems not that relevant in here. Also, the last sentence of this answer could probably use some editing by someone more competent than me. – mrzool Sep 02 '15 at 12:30
  • @DavidCarlisle Very interesting, I'll look into that. Thanks. – mrzool Sep 02 '15 at 12:31

1 Answers1

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Some of those reasons emerged in the comments:

  • backward compatibility
  • only partial microtype support
  • XeTeX brings "complications"
  • english-speaking users who only need ASCII support
  • pdfTeX is faster

Feel free to edit to add more reasons, expand or reformulate.

Community
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mrzool
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