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I have dedicated a lot of time learning LaTeX, but periodically hear about LuaTex and its virtues. What I don't hear are the costs of switching over, other than the need to have new programs.

There are two costs that I expect in any transition:

  1. The difficulty in learning new commands for old functionality. If there is a new function in LuaTex that I couldn't use in LaTeX, of course I need to learn that, and that isn't a transfer cost, per se, but the cost of expanding my technical repetoire. However, if I need to relearn commands I once new, then that is a cost.

  2. The cost in changing existing texts to use LuaTex. Since I have ongoing projects, changing over would entail changing current projects to match the new format.

In each case, the question is how hard is it to keep doing what I can currently do in LaTeX but in LuaTex. If there is perfect compatibility in LuaTex with LaTeX commands, there is no additional cost just to change over. If the commands are utterly different, then it is like someone starting from scratch at either language.

I am not looking for recommendations, as that falls outside the scope of SE, just general descriptions of the major differences, and educated estimates of the difficulty of making those changes.

The Pompitous of Love
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    While you mention considering switching from LaTeX to LuaTeX, I assume you meant to write switching from pdfLaTeX to LuaLaTeX. Please confirm. Please also tell us how up-to-date your TeX distribution is. – Mico Sep 05 '17 at 17:42
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    you are comparing luatex with latex which is the wrong comparison, luatex is the underlying engine,which you can compare to pdftex. lualatex is built using the same latex.ltx source file as pdflatex, just using the different engine. So initially at least you can just use exactly the same commands (but of course you are not then using the extra luatex features) so if you take the sample2e.tex document that comes with latex, switching is just a matter of using lualatex sample2e instead of pdflatex sample2e. – David Carlisle Sep 05 '17 at 17:44
  • rather than ask, just try: take one of your existing documents and process it with lualatex instead of pdflatex. – David Carlisle Sep 05 '17 at 17:48
  • This is actually exactly what I did not know. I currently use PDFLaTeX with a reasonably current MikTex (on my Windows Machine), TexLIve (on Linux) or a completely currently TeXLive through Overleaf. – The Pompitous of Love Sep 05 '17 at 17:49
  • Knowing this, I have found another question that answers what I asked. Can a mod please close this question, and point it to https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/28642/frequently-loaded-packages-differences-between-pdflatex-and-lualatex# – The Pompitous of Love Sep 05 '17 at 17:50

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