Typst is the modern LaTeX. https://typst.app/
For all the well-deserved complaints about TeX's and LaTeX's syntax, Typst only makes this worse, by repurposing even more characters as markup.
Modern LaTeX
71–80 of 224 posts
Re: Modern LaTeX
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Typst doesn't (yet) have one of the features that make LaTex stand out: microtypography. See https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/4693
Typst has some of the microtypography features already built-in and enabled by default, like overhang (character protrusion). And there's another microtype PR open, by the reporter of the linked issue (nice!)
This might be one of the areas where it takes a lot of effort to catch up with LaTex.
The microtype user manual shows how much thought has gone into it: https://mirror.foobar.to/CTAN/macros/latex/contrib/microtype...
Re: Modern LaTeX
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember tons of latex zealots 20 years ago. The internet must be full of latex vs word flamewars. Also, typst is just really good.
Word 20 years ago was a very different beast compared to word today. For starters, it still had a closed, binary (read: not friendly to source control) format. It also had more bugs than Klendathu. When you are losing your semester's 25-page seminal work an hour before deadline because Word had that weird little bug about long documents and random CJK characters (and whether or not the moon was currently in the House…
> For starters, it still had a closed, binary (read: not friendly to source control) format
Word still has a closed format. It supposedly standardized OOXML, but - it doesn't follow that standard; Microsoft apparently managed to warp the XML standard to accommodate its weirdness; and all sorts of details encoded by MSO in that format are not actually documented.
There also used to be the problem of different renderings on different machines (even if you had all the relevant fonts installed): You opened a document on another person's computer and things were out-of-place, styling and spacing a bit different, page transitions not at same point etc. I don't know if that's the case today.
Granted, though, hangs and crashes and weird gibberish on opening a document are rare today.
Re: Modern LaTeX
#74LaTeX is quite underrated these days. Even though alternatives like Typst are popping up, LaTeX is also pretty convenient and powerful if you get past the crude syntax and obscure compilation errors. I sill remember my disbelieve when I found out that I can change my article into a presentation just by changing the document class to "beamer". These days I usually default to pandoc's markdown, mostly because the raw t…
Please nobody actually do this. Good presentation slides have almost zero overlap with the corresponding article since they serve completely different purposes. In my field, seeing beamer slides is a huge red flag for an imminent terrible presentation. Slides are an extremely visual medium, and WYSIWYM is a huge hindrance for designing appealing slides.
Good slides is about good diagrams.
LaTeX has all the tooling to write high-quality ones.
Re: Modern LaTeX
#75I always wonder why people compare Latex with word and not with the single most popular document markup (especially here): HTML + css + javascript. The problems are quite similar, "How do I center a div?" vs "How do I keep this float on this page?" Has latex really modernized? I don't hear a lot about new layouts or style mechanisms. Most people are probably reading articles online these days, although there is a lot…
> I always wonder why people compare Latex with word and not with... HTML...
At the very least, because those are the two popular software systems used for creating documents. HTML+CSS isn't; and Javascript is irrelevant for print.
Re: Modern LaTeX
#76[dead]
Re: Modern LaTeX
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember tons of latex zealots 20 years ago. The internet must be full of latex vs word flamewars. Also, typst is just really good.
Latex is not a company’s product. That’s a substantial difference.
How so? Only their web app seems to be closed source. And the company was created by the two project founders. They also don't seem to be doing a lot more than a community project.
Re: Modern LaTeX
#78I always wonder why people compare Latex with word and not with the single most popular document markup (especially here): HTML + css + javascript. The problems are quite similar, "How do I center a div?" vs "How do I keep this float on this page?" Has latex really modernized? I don't hear a lot about new layouts or style mechanisms. Most people are probably reading articles online these days, although there is a lot…
There are many reasons this comparison is not made. I will just touch on one. The target medium is different. For html, you have monitors of different sizes as well as windows that can be resized. For latex, you choose your target at the start: A4 paper? Screen presentation? A0 poster? With a fixed medium in mind, you can be extremely particular on where on this canvas you want a piece of text/graphic or whatever. Wi…
> For latex, you choose your target at the start
Yes, sometimes, but I would say that one of the benefits of latex is how easy you can switch to another layout. But I guess the point is that you typically render to a set of outputs with fixed dimensions (pdf)
Re: Modern LaTeX
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember tons of latex zealots 20 years ago. The internet must be full of latex vs word flamewars. Also, typst is just really good.
Word 20 years ago was a very different beast compared to word today. For starters, it still had a closed, binary (read: not friendly to source control) format. It also had more bugs than Klendathu. When you are losing your semester's 25-page seminal work an hour before deadline because Word had that weird little bug about long documents and random CJK characters (and whether or not the moon was currently in the House…
Case in point, by the time I got at CERN in 2003, most researchers were writing their papers in Word or FrameMaker, with LaTeX lookalike templates.
In two years I hardly met anyone still doing pure LaTeX publications, unless the publishing body only accepted LaTeX as submission format.
Re: Modern LaTeX
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember tons of latex zealots 20 years ago. The internet must be full of latex vs word flamewars. Also, typst is just really good.
Latex is not a company’s product. That’s a substantial difference.
Obviously there are differences, but that wasn't the point of my comment. I replied to the claim that latex never needed "marketers". Or did you mean to reply to a different comment?