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Some packages and fonts require a specific engine.

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Common Symptoms

  • Unicode glyph failures under pdfLaTeX.
  • fontspec errors with pdfLaTeX.
  • CJK or RTL rendering issues.

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Rule of Thumb

  • pdfLaTeX: classic latin workflows.
  • XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX: modern Unicode, system fonts, CJK, RTL.

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Example

engine-choice.tex
% Requires XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{TeX Gyre Termes}