Bilingual XeLaTeX Research Typesetting: Toolchain Validation

Summary

Validated capabilities

9 / 9

All compiled and visually inspected

Output

3 pages

A4, compact with full test coverage

Build Engine

XeLaTeX

ctex + Fandol Chinese font

Bibliography backend

Biber

Author–year citation style

ConclusionThis sample is suitable as an acceptance test for a Linux research-writing environment. Rather than showcase a particular paper, it is designed to expose problems with fonts, packages, figures, numbering, and bibliography tools in a single build.

Rendered output

These pages are the actual output of the successful XeLaTeX and Biber build. Select a page to view it at full size. Together, they show the document structure and bilingual text, mathematics and tables, vector figures, code, and references.

LaTeX sample page 1: bilingual title, abstract, table of contents, text hierarchy, and lists — PAGE 01 · BILINGUAL TEXT & STRUCTURE

LaTeX sample page 2: equations, theorems, tables, and units — PAGE 02 · MATH & TABLES

LaTeX sample page 3: TikZ, PGFPlots, code, and references — PAGE 03 · FIGURES, CODE & REFERENCES

1. Test objectives and scope

The test directory contains the main document, a BibLaTeX database, build instructions, and records of font-related failures. The test verifies the complete source-to-PDF workflow and checks that key elements render without missing glyphs, placeholder boxes, overlap, or clipping.

This is not a font-quality benchmark, print-color assessment, or PDF/UA accessibility audit. The sample data is for typesetting tests only; any accuracy or timing values shown in its tables are not experimental results.

2. Coverage matrix

Capabilities	Coverage	Verification result
Bilingual text	Chinese and English, bold and italic text, monospaced text, footnotes, and full-width punctuation	Passed
Document structure	Title, abstract, table of contents, sections, nested lists, and page numbers	Passed
Mathematics	Subscripts, accents, matrices, piecewise functions, integrals, limits, theorems, and equation numbers	Passed
Tables and units	booktabs, multirow, siunitx, decimal alignment, and scientific notation	Passed
Vector figures	TikZ curves, axes, annotations, and subfigures	Passed
Plots	PGFPlots lines, grids, axis labels, and legends	Passed
Code listings	Python syntax highlighting, line numbers, wrapping, borders, and monospaced fonts	Passed
Cross-references	Links to theorem, equation, table, and figure numbers	Passed, with a localization issue noted
Bibliography	Biber, author–year citations, DOI links, and reference entries	Passed

3. Minimum reproducible process

The main document uses ctexart for Chinese and Unicode support through XeLaTeX. biblatex uses Biber as its backend, while latexmk runs XeLaTeX and Biber as needed until the build converges.

# Build
latexmk -xelatex main.tex

# Force a full rebuild and stop on errors
latexmk -g -xelatex -interaction=nonstopmode -halt-on-error main.tex

# Remove intermediate build files
latexmk -C

Acceptance checkA successful build only confirms that the tools exited without an error. Render the complete PDF and inspect each page for font fallback, clipped equations, misplaced floats, overflowing code, and broken bibliography links.

4. Layout verification and follow-up items

4.1 Passed checks

All three A4 pages render correctly, with legible Chinese and Latin text and no missing glyphs or placeholder boxes.
Matrices, integrals, piecewise functions, and multiline equations stay within the page; table values remain aligned.
TikZ and PGFPlots figures remain crisp, with a clear hierarchy between subfigure captions and the main caption.
Biber produces two complete references with author–year citations and working DOI links.

4.2 Non-blocking issue

cleveref still labels references in English (for example, theorem, equation, figure, and table). For a Chinese-only paper, define localized names or review the package language options and loading order. The sample also renders the word to in a Celsius range; formal Chinese documents should use a consistent Chinese range marker.

5. Desktop font rendering issue

After installing the Chinese TeX Live components, Chinese character spacing may temporarily look wrong in a desktop terminal or an Electron/Chromium app. The evidence points away from the LaTeX build chain: installation changes the system Fontconfig fallback order, while long-running graphical apps may retain stale font caches or mappings.

Record fc-match output and package changes before and after installation so the results can be compared.
ctex under XeLaTeX can use TeX Live's bundled Fandol fonts; basic Chinese support usually does not require changing desktop fonts.
After changing fonts, rebuild the Fontconfig cache and fully quit and restart apps that render text. Restart again if the cache still appears inconsistent.
Specify fonts explicitly in the source when possible to reduce dependence on the desktop's default fallback chain.

Scope of this findingDo not attribute this behavior to a single font file without evidence. A reliable diagnosis compares font-matching results, package-change records, and application behavior before and after restart.

6. Redactions and environment details

This report includes commonly used package combinations, build commands, verification methods, and failure mechanisms. It omits absolute source paths, local usernames, host identifiers, user-level configuration, installation logs, and other details tied to a specific environment. The author field is presented as a toolchain-validation label.

7. Conclusion

This test confirms that XeLaTeX, ctex, TikZ/PGFPlots, listings, cleveref, siunitx, and Biber can form a compact, reproducible baseline for bilingual research typesetting. The core features render as expected. Further work should address localized reference names and unit-range wording rather than expand the test matrix.