[nishonia]

> all of them are mutually incompatible in most situations.

I haven't compiled against every implementation, but I did just recently rerun a report I create 4 years ago under a different engine. I spent about 20 minutes addressing the new complaints, when I finished that the generated pdf looked exactly the same as the old one - but with up to date data. Try that with html :) Heck, I've had the exact same experience switching C compilers. I do agree with you about the crappy error reporting. There is a reason why the Library of Congress is bundling data with binaries now, this is a very common problem - but in my experience Latex has fared much better than most formats.