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Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

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Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#301

Post by ThinkBeat »

tcfhgj wrote: post #168
ThinkBeat wrote: post #167

Whenever someone creates a "better and lightweight" successor to latex they will over time be asked to, or by themselves need to add another small feature to extend its capabilities will over time move closer and closer to the LaTex features set. Or someone will use it and create a large document and find that Typst just does not have enough features they need, they will get frustrated and feel the need to move over…

Are you implying latex is a global optimum?

I would say that it is the most complete typesetting system out there that I know about¹

It is not the optimal system that could possibly be created. for many reasons.

However as people design new typesetting systems or various kinds, and they make it the priority for it to be simple. Then usually over time users become restless because the markup langauge misses a typesetting feature they would like.

And we wee a plethora of markup forks of all sorts that include one set of typesetting additional features that the authors deemed nessescary.

The more you devlelop an alternative typesetting system, eventually you will need features that are all already included in TeX. and they are included because they were needed in an advanced typesetting system that would give people the tool needed to highly polished outputs.

But TeX is not a system for the masses, nor was it ever meant to be.

¹(There may be systems just as good used by print media)

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#302

Post by malshe »

sieve wrote: post #31

I have been planning to put out a quarterly Sanskrit newsletter for some time now, and was dreading having to deal with LaTeX. For basic stuff, LibreOffice PDF export works. But that is not a plain text workflow. I then discovered typst and it is a breath of fresh air. Unicode/Dēvanāgarī support out-of-the-box, no installing gigabytes of packages, near-instant compilation. My complements to those who got this done.

Where can we sign up for the newsletter?

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#303

Post by malshe »

anonu wrote: post #241

Anyone have success with typesetting in HTML and then printing to PDF? This works really well for me and if your application is web centric then it's an easy win if you need to generate PDFs as well.

I think the go to solution is weasyprint for this? https://github.com/Kozea/WeasyPrint

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#304

Post by F3nd0 »

fithisux wrote: post #11

I used it for a presentation. Easy for the basics but it felt like a down grade from Latex or TeXmacs

TeXmacs is pretty great. I feel like its internals still feel a bit arcane, though. Just editing documents through the graphical interface is fine, but if you happen to use some commonplace symbols or diacritics a lot, opening the file as plain text will quickly remind you of it, with bespoke ASCII representations showing up in their place.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#306

Post by coliveira »

ossner wrote: post #176

The crucial component for the success of this, in my opinion, is the acceptance of Typst templates in scientific journals and conferences. The adoption of something like this in universities relies entirely on the adoption by these publishers. I see almost no support in the scientific community for Typst since everyone already has a LaTeX template for a thesis, paper, slides, etc. Researchers need to take the initiat…

We don't want to do this because LaTeX already solves our problems quite well.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#307

Post by coliveira »

whatever1 wrote: post #288
coliveira wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had opened and read the TeX book, you'd understand it.

Oh definitely, let’s do a PhD in Latex and its worthless toolchain before start writing the actual thesis. Software should be invisible and not a hindrance to our ability to express ourselves.

Reading a single book is not equivalent to a PhD in LaTeX.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#308

Post by didericis »

ossner wrote: post #176

The crucial component for the success of this, in my opinion, is the acceptance of Typst templates in scientific journals and conferences. The adoption of something like this in universities relies entirely on the adoption by these publishers. I see almost no support in the scientific community for Typst since everyone already has a LaTeX template for a thesis, paper, slides, etc. Researchers need to take the initiat…

I'm probably ignorant to specific issues that make more advanced typesetting for journal submissions necessary, but I don't understand why some academic flavor of markdown isn't the standard. I'd advocate for that before either LaTeX or Typst.

I absolutely get the importance of typesetting for people who publish physical books/magazines/etc, but when it comes to research I don't see the value of typsetting anything. Journals or print publishers should be responsible for typsetting submissions to fit their style/paper size/etc, and researchers should just be responsible for delivering their research in a format that's simpler and more content focused.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#309

Post by bluenose69 »

bjackman wrote: post #81
bluenose69 wrote: post #77

I've started using typst for small local documents that I would previously have written in markdown (or R-markdown). Typst offers programming features that are very helpful for small writing tasks that need more customization than markdown provides but that don't need the wildly expansive set of templates available in the latex world. Like other academics, I plan to stick with latex for journal articles and books, un…

> Like other academics, I plan to stick with latex for journal articles and books, unless publishers provide support for typst. In my undergrad we sent all our essays etc as LaTeX and it was honestly very usable. I assume this was somewhat dependent on having a wealth of enthusiast professors and postgrads to develop the templates though...? Since then, I've used LaTeX in a "freeform" way and absolutely hated it, I w…

I've never seen a publisher's template that was hard to work with.

The process of writing in latex for journals (and textbooks -- I've written for both things) is really very easy. Publishers almost always provide a sample .tex file that has items you just fill in. For example, there will be something like `\authorNames{}` and you just put the names between the braces. The same goes for titles, equations, figures, etc. There will be sample paragraphs as well. And they will have examples of various citations styles, too.

Speaking of citations, latex has good support for citation databases. (Typst and markdown also provide this support.)

I'd say most people I know write their early drafts in latex. They have a target journal in mind from the start of the writing process, so they just grab the latest sample file and stylesheet(s) from the publisher's website and start entering text.

As you say, using latex for freeform documents is a different matter. That's where I've started to use typst. And I do recommend it for such things. You may find yourself wanting to make some typst templates for common tasks (meeting notes, position papers, etc.) but it's not terrible hard to make such templates. I've made a few, but often I don't bother -- I just put a few lines of customization at the start, if I want to alter how section headings look, or I want a different font from the default one.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#310

Post by Ericson2314 »

throwaway_7274 wrote: post #204
fergie wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> top-3 departement I’m curious- what does this mean?

Ugh, unfortunately it means "please note that I'm not an unserious person." Very often when you have opinions on software on the internet, trolls will jump out of the hedgerow and shout, "who are you to have an opinion?" And, sadly, that same sort of person will often be mollified somewhat by prestige. Feels kind of icky to have written that, though, and maybe I regret it slightly.

I think it's good, because it will enable other people to be less scared to ditch Typst

Honestly, I consider it embarrassing that it took so long for LaTeX to be dethroned. Academia is supposed to be about thinking for the long term. Instead everyone is too busy publishing and not perishing to rid themselves of LaTeX (and predatory journals outside CS, etc. etc.).

Given that, it takes credentialed "winners" to change the system. Everyone else is too often too afraid to play the game in the lowest risk manner. Sad.

Thanks for your posts on on Typst.

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