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Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

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11–20 of 148 posts

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#11
post #4

I really love Rust (believe it's the best systems programming language out there), so I've checked out tectonic a while ago. In many ways it represents precisely the direction I think Tex based typesetting should go Sadly I can't use it though as it doesn't support biber which would be needed for Unicode author names: https://github.com/tectonic-typesetting/tectonic/issues/35

I'm no expert to anything typesetting systems, but I've noticed this on the homepage:

> Thanks to the power of XeTeX, Tectonic can use modern OpenType fonts and is fully Unicode-enabled.

...which seems to oppose your statement and the linked issue. Can you explain, please?

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#12

Really cool to see all those rewrites of existing stuff in Rust. Does anyone know if the Rust community has ever done anything original, though?

>Does anyone know if the Rust community has ever done anything original, though?

Yes, they made an original, better, programming language.

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#13
post #6

Why link to a fork instead of the main project? https://github.com/tectonic-typesetting/tectonic

That fork is quite curious, it seems like they've really gone out and created quite an active little fork, but haven't spent the time to explain what is different and interesting about their fork in the readme.

The about summarizes it:

> Experimental Oxidization of Tectonic the TeX/LaTeX engine.

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#14
post #11
post #4

I really love Rust (believe it's the best systems programming language out there), so I've checked out tectonic a while ago. In many ways it represents precisely the direction I think Tex based typesetting should go Sadly I can't use it though as it doesn't support biber which would be needed for Unicode author names: https://github.com/tectonic-typesetting/tectonic/issues/35

I'm no expert to anything typesetting systems, but I've noticed this on the homepage: > Thanks to the power of XeTeX, Tectonic can use modern OpenType fonts and is fully Unicode-enabled. ...which seems to oppose your statement and the linked issue. Can you explain, please?

Biber is a reference manager, so orthogonal to XeTeX or general unicode support.

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#15
I think that Rust is a perfect open source language. For the longest time the open source community has shown that it has an issue with innovation, however is great at recreating existing ideas and products. I think that this strength can be combined somehow with the "rewrite in Rust" strength and get great synergy.

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#16

I think that Rust is a perfect open source language. For the longest time the open source community has shown that it has an issue with innovation, however is great at recreating existing ideas and products. I think that this strength can be combined somehow with the "rewrite in Rust" strength and get great synergy.

> For the longest time the open source community has shown that it has an issue with innovation

How so? A bunch of my favorite software has no real closed-source equivalent, sometime precisely because it’s open source.

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#17
post #8

Currently using this to build my Master's thesis. It's nice because it detects all the packages used in the tex source and downloads them automatically.

What do you need that isn't there already with TeXLive? I haven't downloaded a package in many years, despite many reinstalls and a lot of varied Latex use.

Re: Rewriting LaTeX in Pure Rust

#18
post #5

Getting LaTex running through wasm would be great. Tools like this, which just interact mostly with the filesystem, are a great example of what non-web wasm can do by simplifying the distribution process.

You're in luck (if a year behind :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710105
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