Omit lualatex as pdf-engine

[SvonGrebmer]

I am curious to hear the reasoning behind using lualatex as explicit pdf-engine - can thing in the yaml be omitted so that defaults are used?

[fkohrt]

The everyday user definitively won't notice a difference. I still think using luaLaTeX is better than XeLaTeX (which Quarto currently uses by default) or pdfLaTeX (which rmarkdown uses) for various reasons:

• the current accessibility improvements (i.e., creating tagged PDFs for blind users) happen for luaLaTeX and pdfLaTeX (but not XeLaTeX)
• XeLaTeX is not actively developed anymore
• some of the optional features in Pandoc's templates are only supported for luaLateX (e.g., selective ligature suppression)
• Font expansion by the TeX package microtype is not supported for XeTeX

Some other reasons are also documented at quarto-dev/quarto-cli#11321 and Quarto will likely default to luaLaTeX in the future.

The major drawback probably is speed, as luaLaTeX is not known for its speed.