[XeTeX] which TeX-based software

[Arthur Reutenauer]

> 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.

  In yet other words, the features you miss are about Japanese
typesetting, not Unicode.  This is an important distinction since the
original poster doesn’t need to typeset Japanese.

  As a an aside, if you’re talking about pTeX you should really mention
its UTF-8 extension, upTeX.

> 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

  The version that’s currently actively developed, Mark IV (mkiv) is
focused on LuaTeX, while the earlier version, Mark II, is more or less
frozen and supports pdfTeX and XeTeX.

	Best,

		Arthur