<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div id="yiv4081049588"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_11479"><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_11478"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_11477">What I was trying to explain was the following: even if the software supports UTF-8 / unicode, then that does not necessarily mean that it supports ("out of the box") all your typographical wishes and demands.</div><div id="yiv4081049588yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_10048"><br clear="none"></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv4081049588yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_10049">The OP was referring to several complicated typesetting tasks. My advice is: do not stare yourself blind on support for unicode alone. If you need several complicated typesetting tasks, check out the various classes, packages and tex-engine as a whole. Especially if you are using a more or less traditional alphabet and you do not need to use Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ethiopian, Cambodian, Thai and Hindi in one document, you can just as well use the traditional versions of latex/<br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_11480"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_11481">As far as up(La)TeX is concerned: yes, there is upLaTeX, which is the best Japanese language version of LaTeX as far as I am concerned, and which my students often use. I prefer LuaLaTeX because upLaTeX does not support PDF inclusion.<br clear="none"></div><div id="yiv4081049588yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_9919"><span></span></div> <div class="yiv4081049588qtdSeparateBR" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1524982744310_11482"><br clear="none">Wilfred<br clear="none"></div><div class="yiv4081049588yqt3898988290" id="yiv4081049588yqt73976"></div></div></div></div><div class=".yiv4081049588yahoo_quoted"> <div style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"> <div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"> <div dir="ltr"><font face="Arial" size="2"> On Sunday, April 29, 2018 1:12 AM, Arthur Reutenauer <arthur.reutenauer@normalesup.org> wrote:<br clear="none"></font></div> <br clear="none"><br clear="none"> <div class="yiv4081049588y_msg_container">> Second, about unicode, my experiences are mixed. I use Japanese as my main language of communication. I found that "plain XeLaTeX" is not really adequate for Japanese as it lacks many common features; LuaLaTeX performs better, but still not as good as the pre-UTF-8 special "Japanese LaTeX" called "platex". In other words, even if XeLaTeX can typeset all unicode characters, you still need proper fonts, and special typesetting (such as indents, hyphenation rules, etc) may not be perfect.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> In yet other words, the features you miss are about Japanese<br clear="none">typesetting, not Unicode. This is an important distinction since the<br clear="none">original poster doesn’t need to typeset Japanese.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> As a an aside, if you’re talking about pTeX you should really mention<br clear="none">its UTF-8 extension, upTeX.<div class="yiv4081049588yqt2802021199" id="yiv4081049588yqtfd95983"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">> If you are looking for something which based on TeX but closer to DTP software, check out ConTeXt. ConTeXt has been used for many complex, professional typesetting jobs, and the developers are very active in trying to find new solutions if needed. IIRC the current version of ConTeXt supports at least LuaLaTeX which provides support for UTF-8</div><br clear="none"><br clear="none"> The version that’s currently actively developed, Mark IV (mkiv) is<br clear="none">focused on LuaTeX, while the earlier version, Mark II, is more or less<br clear="none">frozen and supports pdfTeX and XeTeX.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Best,<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Arthur<div class="yiv4081049588yqt2802021199" id="yiv4081049588yqtfd34838"><br clear="none"></div><br clear="none"><br clear="none"></div> </div> </div> </div></div></body></html>