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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

#91

Post by vkazanov »

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.

I don't know about now but in 2000s anything even remotely math-related was PURE PAIN in Word-likes.

In my master's there were like 30 pages of formulas, all interdependent. Typing/retyping these would take forever.

Also, something as simple as having per-chapter files or working with an acceptable editor also helps.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#92

Post by Evidlo »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #4

Typst looks really promising, especially due to the fact that it had common templates (like the IEEE one) which produce content identical to LaTeX. My biggest gripe with latex is the tooling. During my last paper, I ended up using a makefile which would usually work. When it didn’t work, running it twice would fix the issue. In the rarest cases, I had to run `git clean -xdf` and the next run would work. I still have…

Just use Tectonic nowadays for compiling LaTeX source. It automatically handles these cases of compiling multiple times.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#94

Post by cycomanic »

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.

From watching people write their thesis in both latex and word, I'd say if anything it is the other way around. The people who write their thesis in word (or another wysiwyg editor) spend more time on their layout than the people writing in latex. Worse, they spend the time while writing, while latex allows for separation of tasks, which allows people to get into the flow much more easily.

Sure, theoretically you can only concentrate on writing with word and ignore layout. In practice in takes a lot of discipline so instead you see people moving figures around putting spaces or returns to move a heading where they want to etc.. In particular as a way to procrastinate from actual writing.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#95

Post by int_19h »

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…

I remember when I submitted a paper written in LaTeX to my math prof in college, alone in the class (nobody even mentioned it to us so it wasn't exactly surprising, but I was one of those guys running Gentoo as their desktop back then so...).

She not only instantly recognized it, but, judging by the look and the platitudes she gave me on the spot, it probably earned me an extra point on the overall grade.

When in Rome...

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#96

Post by Syzygies »

AI is the primary audience for our writing, and the primary reason to reconsider our choice of markup format. It's all about semantic compression: Typst source, markdown, and asciidoc are far more concise than LaTeX source.

I'm observing, not here to convince anyone. The last six months of my life have been turned upside down, trying to discover the right touch for working with AI on topological research and code. It's hard to find good advice. Like surfing, the hardest part is all these people on the beach whining how the waves are kind of rough.

AI can actually read SVG math diagrams better than most people. AI doesn't like reading LaTeX source any more than I do.

I get the journal argument, but really? Some thawed-out-of-a-glacier journal editors still insist on two column formats, as if anyone still prints to paper. I'm old enough to not care. I'm thinking of publishing my work as a silent animation, and only later reluctantly releasing my AI prompts in the form of Typst documentation for the code.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#97

Post by kyawzazaw »

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.

i mean that's what overleaf does with latex too, so i don't see the difference

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#98

Post by ummonk »

the-wumpus wrote: post #89
dleslie wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there really a community of volunteer contributors that could fork it if that happened? Typically with a corporate-backed project like this, the corporate development tends to crowd out the formation of a volunteer community of contributors that would be able to take over development.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#99

Post by nxpnsv »

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.

Well during 5 years of undergrad reports and papers, then 5 years of PhD thesis papers, you do tend to hoard some useful snippets, it is more of a byproduct than a fixation... at least for me.

Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst

#100

Post by eviks »

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.

> neglecting the open source part

So it's no different than fully open sourced projects.

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