On 12/16/2021 9:31 AM, Herbert Voss via lyx-users wrote:

LuaTeX ,and XeTeX too, are more or less frozen code, just like TeX.
Only bugs will be fixed. There are no good reasons _not_ to use LuaTeX instead
of pdfTeX:


I just performed an interesting experiment comparing the results from compiling 
the same source file with XeTeX, PDFLaTeX and LuaTeX. I was surprised by the 
results I got. In the past, I had found that, when I used XeTeX, I got more 
"overfull hboxes" with lines flowing past the right margin than I did with 
PDFLaTeX. I also would get *many* more hyphenated words with XeTeX than with 
PDFLaTeX. I assumed I would get similar results with LuaTeX, but I was 
pleasantly surprised.

For my experiment, took a 45 page paper I wrote for a former employer. For the 
PDFLaTeX compiled version, I used the mathpazo Palatino font that came with 
MikTeX and compiled it with PDFLaTeX. For the XeTeX and LuaTeX versions, I used 
Windows' Palatino Linotype font. All other settings were the same, including 
the use of the Microtype package in all versions.

In a single random paragraph, the resulting file compiled with XeTeX gave me 
eight hyphenated line endings. The same paragraph in the document compiled with 
LuaTeX gave me three hyphenated line endings, and the same paragraph in the 
document compiled with PDFLaTeX only gave me one hyphenated line ending.

XeTeX also gave me many overfull lines, in fact so many as to make the 
resulting document all but unusable. PDFLaTeX gave me a few, but I could work 
with them. I was surprised to see that LuaTeX appeared to give me the fewest 
overfull lines. I saw very few lines that extended beyond the right margin, and 
those I did happen to find extended such a small amount as to be all but 
unnoticeable.

I was very surprised by how different the results were when using XeTeX vs. 
LuaTeX. I had just assumed that the two engines would produce very similar 
results, but that was not the case at all. In fact, having seen LuaTeX's 
document, I can't imagine why anyone would choose XeTeX over LuaTeX. I was also 
surprised to see how well LuaTeX's results compared with PDFLaTeX's document. 
While LuaTex still gave me more hyphenated line endings, it gave me fewer 
noticeable overfull lines at the right margin.

Okay, now back to my "real" work.

Virgil







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