> This is just FUD. XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX do not introduce any "complications" and are not only for "advanced users".

I agree that LuaLaTeX is the only sensible recommendation for beginners, and is actually easier to use in most cases, but there can occasionally be some complications with old packages/classes/preambles that were written with pdfLaTeX (or even classical DVI LaTeX) in mind. This is fairly rare, and usually means that the package/preamble is just broken, but hearing that isn't very useful for users who just want to fix their broken documents.

> This is just FUD. XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX do not introduce any "complications"

Well, there are still some packages that work flawlessly with pdfLaTeX, but not completely with LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX --- microtype is the canonical example.

I don’t get why XeLaTeX didn’t automatically obviate all the others by now to begin with, at least for any greenfield applications.

(I use tectonic now but had been using XeLaTeX for more than a decade before.)

> Trusting LaTeX to automatically distribute tables and figures produces not-very-readable documents with tables and figures interrupting content (e.g. page 12).

The positioning of the table on page 12 is completely inline with how tables/figures are placed in books and academic figures. The rule is that all displayed tables/figures should either be placed at the top or bottom of a page. Ideally, they should be placed on the same page as they are first mentioned in the text, but if this is not possible, it is acceptable to push them to subsequent pages.

Interestingly, the author did manually specify `[ht!]` options for the table, and not for some other tables further in the chapter.

I went to give Crixet a try, and there was a AI assistant in the editor. I looked in the settings to turn it off and the setting to do so said "I prefer my ignorance handcrafted, organic, and 100% human-made."

:)