fontspec

The other package that I would add was fontspec, in fact I was shocked to see microtype and not see fontspec mentioned next.

You are not using indexes if you are laying out 800k of text in 30 seconds with memoir+fontspec+microtype.

Using XeTeX, TikZ, fontspec and Open Type fonts you can do fun stuff that look gorgeous.

A lot of latex2e packages are using latex3 in the background (for example fontspec).

For anyone new coming to latex instead of messing with unicode bandaids and worrying about fonts they can just use xelatex/lualatex and fontspec.

Similarly, I've had nice results combining Zapf Renaissance Antiqua text (via XeTeX fontspec) with Palatino maths and Optima headings.

That's kind of what I expected you would say;) You like fontspec and utf, both of which work in lualatex.

In the mean time, we try to auto-detect which engine to use, so if you load the fontspec package, for example, we'll automatically use XeLaTeX.

Fonts are still a mess in pdfTeX though, so I'll definitely second your fontspec+LuaLaTeX recommendation.

No cross-references, just a table of contents, but fontspec was used.

I have to use fontspec to explicitly turn on the rare/obscure ligatures in latex.

With both of them, using OTF and TTF fonts is as simple as just saying `\setmainfont[Dejavu]` (using the simplefont module in ConTeXt or fontspec package in LaTeX).

XeLaTeX offers a great out-of-the-box experience for using commercial, "pro" fonts, particularly on a Mac; check out the 'fontspec' package.