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Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

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Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#121

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

As a long time latex user, and one who is occasionally frustrated by usual things about latex, I have two qualms about attempting to switch to a new system. The first is I already have found solutions to many of my edge cases in latex. Will I have to do this all over again in something like Typst? It can't be so good as to not have any. And when I do encounter them, is the user base big enough to have already encountered it and solved it and wrote about it, so I can just look it up?

Looking at the example in the link, in principle it looks great. But one of the strengths of latex is that I can customize things. Like for the list example, I can have fine tune control over the indent on both sides, the list marker symbol, the space between the marker and the text, and so on and so on. Does typst have this level of control?

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#122

Post by vessenes »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #121

As a long time latex user, and one who is occasionally frustrated by usual things about latex, I have two qualms about attempting to switch to a new system. The first is I already have found solutions to many of my edge cases in latex. Will I have to do this all over again in something like Typst? It can't be so good as to not have any. And when I do encounter them, is the user base big enough to have already encount…

Same boat here. It’s a very good layout language. And vastly superior production process. Will you find new edge cases? Yes. Is there a large user base covering all problems? No.

You can add: “Does Claude Code understand it well enough?” No as of a year ago, last time I checked.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#126

Post by reknih »

robin_reala wrote: post #97

I’ve used neither Latex or Typst, but how are they at producing accessible PDFs?

We're pretty close, actually. The PRs for accessible PDFs [^1] and their associated documentation [^2] are landing next week.

[^1]: https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6619

[^2]: https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6905

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#127

Post by dfc »

sixtyj wrote: post #119
xigoi wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would you use to generate PDFs from a text-based template?

E.g. Pandoc, universal tool…

You will be surprised to learn that pandoc uses latex for generating the PDF. It's barely hidden:

https://www.pandoc.org/demo/example33/2.4-creating-a-pdf.htm...

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#128

Post by tcfhgj »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #121

As a long time latex user, and one who is occasionally frustrated by usual things about latex, I have two qualms about attempting to switch to a new system. The first is I already have found solutions to many of my edge cases in latex. Will I have to do this all over again in something like Typst? It can't be so good as to not have any. And when I do encounter them, is the user base big enough to have already encount…

Control for indentation, spacing and symbol is available: https://typst.app/docs/reference/model/list/

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#129

Post by jbaber »

It's my duty bring up that plain TeX, the Knuth language in which the large macro collection LaTeX is written, isn't as verbose and opaque as LaTeX when people complain about that.

It has the opposite problem where you may have more control than you'd like. But it is in some sense very simple. e.g. this is a valid plain TeX document:

$$\aleph_0$$

\bye

Things don't have to begin{ and end{ etc.

There are simple collections of useful macros like [extended plain] kind of like lodash where the aim is to enhance the classic syntax by ` input eplain` at the top, not take over.

NB: I was so proud to write my thesis entirely in [extended plain], but when it was time to submit it to the library they basically said, "That's nice, nerd, but we have specific style files." and I had to rewrite it into LaTeX anyway!

[extended plain]: https://tug.org/eplain/

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#130

Post by bombcar »

jbaber wrote: post #129

It's my duty bring up that plain TeX, the Knuth language in which the large macro collection LaTeX is written, isn't as verbose and opaque as LaTeX when people complain about that. It has the opposite problem where you may have more control than you'd like. But it is in some sense very simple. e.g. this is a valid plain TeX document: $$\aleph_0$$ \bye Things don't have to begin{ and end{ etc. There are simple collect…

Anyone who has only ever used LaTeX will be pleasantly surprised by plain TeX - so many of the things that you'd think must be LaTeX macros are actually just TeX itself.
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