That doesn't answer the question. To me as a common reader, the typesetting of a novel requires in no particular order - nice block text adjustment, line-break

That doesn't answer the question. To me as a common reader, the typesetting of a novel requires in no particular order - nice block text adjustment, line-breaks and hyphenation, line/paragraph,chapter spacing - margins and padding, page numbers, and chapter headings - font selection, supporting ligatures and kerning if you are fancy I'm sure the devil is in the details, but how much detail can there be in basic running text? I'm fine reading novels rendered by basic html engines without css, even in monospaced font. The most important consideration for a text layout engine seems to be the font data format and corresponding font engine, which I don't know much about, because I don't really care.