Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

Post by pkal » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 12:39 PM UTC

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #89

defanor wrote: post #13

Among alternative typesetting systems, there is also SILE, which supports two syntaxes (XML-based and TeX-style), supports scripting in lua, comes with freely available sort-of-specification (unlike (La)TeX or Typst, unless one counts program sources as specification). For formulae, it additionally allows direct MathML input. I have not used either Typst or SILE though, only looked into their documentation. HTML with…

> HTML with MathML may make a decent system as well HTML is fine to write by hand (especially when you take advantage of tag omission [0]), but I can't imagine handwriting MathML, since even simple equations need lots of tags [1]. [0]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#syntax-ta... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML#Presentation_and_semant...

Post by throwaway_7274 » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 12:47 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #122

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.

Post by porridgeraisin » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 12:58 PM UTC

commandersaki wrote: post #10

These are some notes I wrote when I started out with typst when comparing with LaTeX: 1. It doesn't generate 5 bloody files when compiling. 2. Compiling is instant. 3. Diagnostics are way easier to understand (sort of like Rust compiler suggestion style). 4. List items can be either - item1 - item2, etc. or [item1], [item2]. The latter is way better because you can use anchoring to match on the braces (like "%" in vi…

  latexloop() { latexmk -pdf -pvc -emulate-aux-dir -aux-directory=/tmp/latexcrap "$@"; }

  alias latexmk='latexmk -pdf -emulate-aux-dir -aux-directory=/tmp/latexcrap'

Post by __mharrison__ » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 12:59 PM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #136

mr-karan wrote: post #72

It's great to see Typst getting more visibility. We migrated a real-world workload to it a couple of years back: generating and e-mailing 1.5M+ PDFs daily at my org, Zerodha. Our previous pipeline was LaTeX-based (first pdflatex, then lualatex), but we were constantly fighting cryptic memory errors on large documents and huge Docker image sizes that slowed down boot times of our ephemeral workers. Switching to Typst…

I am using a LaTeX pipeline for creating text, invoices, forms, etc. from snippets stored in a database. It was quite complicated to set up, but the results are very satisfying. In principle, I would like an easier markup language, but am afraid to wast my time trying out something new, just to run into limitations after awhile. Here are my most important requirements: Multiple columns configurable for meaningful col…

Post by __mharrison__ » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

tossandthrow wrote: post #37

HiPhish wrote: post #26

I have written a couple of lecture notes in LaTeX and I wrote my master's thesis (mathematics) in LaTeX as well[1]. It's actually a fine language if all you want to do is write and rely on other people's templates. But actually writing my own package or understand how the underlying systems work has always seemed like black magic where individual packages have to avoid stepping on each other's toes, or add specific w…

You footnote really describes why latex was not fine. I recently wrote a thesis in typst. I have written other thesis in latex. In latex i actually wrote in markdown and compiled to latex. I don't need that for typst. If typst can avoid enshittifaction over the next years, then I will stay with them.