[OS X TeX] ``bruising'' (but not ``cutting'') edge TeX

[Herbert Schulz]

On Feb 25, 2014, at 3:18 PM, J. McKenzie Alexander <jalex at lse.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> As someone who hasn’t kept up with the current state of TeX/LaTeX development, I would really appreciate some tips concerning the “mostly stable” production frontier, from a casual end-user perspective. Simply because I would like to know what the current state of art is. With TeX/LaTeX, it’s a bit hard to gauge, if you are on the outside.
> 
> As a point of reference: how many people are using LuaTeX or LuaLaTeX? Are the LaTeX3 files anywhere near a point where the rest of us should pay attention to them when writing macros (i.e., is it worth the pain of learning a new system)? And should I consider learning ConTeXt rather than LaTeX? (Is there any point?)
> 
> Many thanks!
> 
> Jason

Howdy,

Let's see... sounds like you've used (La)TeX before but we have no idea how long ago.

I play with lua(la)tex but wouldn't use it for any production environment. I tend to use pdflatex most of the time with some use xelatex when I want to use System Fonts (those nice otf/ttf/ttc Fonts). As far as graphics are concerned pdflatex will do automatic eps->pdf conversion on the fly without the need using -shell-escape when using the graphicx package. While LaTeX3 isn't complete there are several experimental packages that are used by multiple regularly used packages under LaTeX2e.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)