Why would two apparently identical TeX installations produce different results?

Question

I have XeLaTeX with TeXShop installed on two different machines. One compiles documents without a problem. The other throws weird errors. As far as I can tell they're set up identically, so I don't even know where I should be looking.

An example:

%preamble
\documentclass{tufte-handout}
\usepackage[LY1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text}

\setromanfont{Linux Libertine O}
\setsansfont{Gill Sans}
\setmonofont{Monaco}



\title{Blah blah}

\author{blah}

\date{}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

750 words of blah-di-blah

\end{document}

yields this error:

\maketextlowercase has an extra }

So I run the code on the other machine. It works fine. What could be causing this situation, and how might I fix it?

Answer 1

Have a look here: http://code.google.com/p/tufte-latex/issues/detail?id=64

I only can assume that your tex version is not the same on both machines. The bug is corrected on one. I have the updated version of texlive 2012. It does not throw any error.