Change default latex engine from xelatex to lualatex

[samcarter]

The latex team now encourages users to use LuaLaTeX for new documents, see e.g. the latest latex news https://latex-project.org/news/latex2e-news/ltnews40.pdf

users are urged to migrate XeLaTeX documents to LuaTeX.

or this blog post by a member of the latex team

https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/05/engine-news-from-the-latex-project

As such, LuaTeX is the recommended engine for all new documents.

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I think now might be a good time for quarto to consider changing the default engine. In most cases, users shouldn't notice a difference. For specialised cases like xecjk or xepersian, users could still choose xelatex as engine.

[cscheid]

Quarto should definitely follow best practices from the latex community. Let's experiment with this early in 1.7 and see what the outcome is.

[cscheid]

We are now using lualatex by default in 1.8 prereleases, starting with 1.8.10.

[samcarter]

Thank you very much!