Looking at the compile script for my CV, I'm currently using latex, bibtex, and xelatex, along with sed to work around some nasty bibliography implementation issues.

LaTeX really needs to be just revamped whole. I haven't been following the development of LuaTeX or LaTeX3, but I hope that's what they both do. The syntax needs to be simplified, concerns that no longer exist thanks to improved hardware (such as super-optimized algorithms for hyphenation) need to be discarded, and all of the popular 3rd party packages need to be integrated into a single, cohesive piece of software.

What are the problems with Liang's algorithm?

On a modern computer you could easily store the entire dictionary, but it's not clear that that's actually an improvement since it wouldn't be as good at dealing with unknown words.

Have you looked at ConTeXt?

http://wiki.contextgarden.net/What_is_ConTeXt

In our research group, almost everybody just uses emacs to write and aspell to check.

One person also uses TeXLive, but he is the one non-emacs person for development as well (uses bbedit, I believe).

TeX Live or MikTex (Windows) can get you started; they include the standard compilers, dependencies, and tex2pdf-like scripts.