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I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

fransskarman.com

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Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#81

Post by the-wumpus »

dleslie wrote: post #75

In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. Typst appears to be a mix of open source and closed source; the general model here tends to be neglecting the open source part and implementing critical features in the closed source portion. Which is to say, it's unlikely to live beyond the company itself.

I disagree. The web app editor is closed source, but much of what it provides is open source so editing is a similar (and imo better) experience locally. The typst compiler and LSP and everything you need to use it is open source.

Imo the situation is more like if overleaf were also the people who made the LaTeX project originally.

I think the only possible issue with the typst org dying (assuming after the full 1.0 version so it's mostly maintenance) is that packages are automatically downloaded from the typst site, but an open repo can trivially be made considering that the set of packages used is just from a open source git repo and the closed source site just hosts tar.gz files of the folders in the repo. Not a big deal I think.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#83

Post by agnishom »

dleslie wrote: post #75

In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. Typst appears to be a mix of open source and closed source; the general model here tends to be neglecting the open source part and implementing critical features in the closed source portion. Which is to say, it's unlikely to live beyond the company itself.

> implementing critical features in the closed source portion

Like which critical features, for example?

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#84

Post by agnishom »

wenc wrote: post #27
shermantanktop wrote: post #16

Why do CS doctoral candidates have such a fascination with typesetting? I mean, be into whatever you’re into, I guess. But as soon as someone starts talking about LaTEX and how they spent months on their macros, I think “another hapless victim has fallen into LaTEX’s trap.” It’s like an ant lion that feeds on procrastinating students.

It's because LaTeX gives us a sense of legitimacy. (it's also why people go overboard with math notation in LaTeX documents, even when prose is more appropriate). It produces documents that look like those produced by professors, and luminaries in the field. If you write equations in Word Equation Editor, your work just doesn't look very serious. It's the same joy I felt when I laser-printed my first newsletter desig…

> If you write equations in Word Equation Editor

The experience is also awful. It's much better to write \in or \frac{}{} rather than to go to a dropdown menu and figure out which button to click.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#85

Post by dleslie »

agnishom wrote: post #83
dleslie wrote: post #75

In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. Typst appears to be a mix of open source and closed source; the general model here tends to be neglecting the open source part and implementing critical features in the closed source portion. Which is to say, it's unlikely to live beyond the company itself.

> implementing critical features in the closed source portion Like which critical features, for example?

For now, that's the entire collaboration component. It would make sense to build a portion of document rendering in that context which won't be found in the open source portions. A value-add to convince users to subscribe.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#86

Post by dleslie »

the-wumpus wrote: post #81
dleslie wrote: post #75

In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained. Typst appears to be a mix of open source and closed source; the general model here tends to be neglecting the open source part and implementing critical features in the closed source portion. Which is to say, it's unlikely to live beyond the company itself.

I disagree. The web app editor is closed source, but much of what it provides is open source so editing is a similar (and imo better) experience locally. The typst compiler and LSP and everything you need to use it is open source. Imo the situation is more like if overleaf were also the people who made the LaTeX project originally. I think the only possible issue with the typst org dying (assuming after the full 1.0…

They have a deep incentive to drive users to subscribe, and that's directly at odds with keeping all of the document rendering open source. It makes a lot of sense for them to provide document features that are only available to subscribers.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#87

Post by moelf »

dleslie wrote: post #85
agnishom wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> implementing critical features in the closed source portion Like which critical features, for example?

For now, that's the entire collaboration component. It would make sense to build a portion of document rendering in that context which won't be found in the open source portions. A value-add to convince users to subscribe.

>For now, that's the entire collaboration component.

And LaTeX has this for free? It's separated concerns, I think the analogy is Overleaf and LaTeX but just happened to be made by the same group of folks, it doesn't have to go down the monetization-at-the-cost-of-your-user route.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#89

Post by the-wumpus »

dleslie wrote: post #86
the-wumpus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The web app editor is closed source, but much of what it provides is open source so editing is a similar (and imo better) experience locally. The typst compiler and LSP and everything you need to use it is open source. Imo the situation is more like if overleaf were also the people who made the LaTeX project originally. I think the only possible issue with the typst org dying (assuming after the full 1.0…

They have a deep incentive to drive users to subscribe, and that's directly at odds with keeping all of the document rendering open source. It makes a lot of sense for them to provide document features that are only available to subscribers.

They have some incentive to drive users to subscribe, but they have other forms of income, and I think if they ever implemented even a single feature of actual rendering that was closed source their community would riot and we'd get a community managed fork (probably by the guy who does the language server...).

The only way they can continue to gain traction is if they never ever in any way lock people to the web app. Documents must be portable, it's part of why someone would want typst anyways.

I do not see a future where this happens, and if it does it will be because the typst org has changed hands and is also no longer particularly relevant to the future of typst the language.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#90

Post by aeroevan »

gwervc wrote: post #72
roshdodd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small, but important aspect of typesetting/WYSIWYM is the ability to break down a large document (like a thesis) into discrete sub-components. You could work on each section of your document in an individual .tex file and include it later in your top-level .tex file. This setup works well with VCS like git. Another ergonomic benefit is scripting. For example, if I'm running a series of scripts to generate figures/p…

> The initial setup effort in LaTeX becomes minimal as this cost is "amortized" over the document. I'm still sour about the 3 days it took me to have something usable for my thesis, and I was starting from an existing template. And it's still not exactly how I want it to be; I gave up on addressing a bug in the reference list.

My school just had an official cls file, so my initial setup was just to download the template. So if that's where you're coming from (the journals I submitted to also had official templates), it's really minimal setup.
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