Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
tectonic-typesetting.github.io
Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#2Written in Rust! Can you tell?
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://drop-sh.fullyjustified.net | shRe: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#3Written in Rust! Can you tell? curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://drop-sh.fullyjustified.net | sh
As a non-Rust person, mind explaining the comment to a layperson?
Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#4Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#5I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle.
It also claims reasonable error messages but I only ran it on error-free files, so I cannot tell.
One small downside is that in my direct comparison with lualatex it was always marginally slower.
Another one is that it is not a rewrite but still based on the old TeX code.
I think tectonic is a great project but generally speaking I find it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% compatible LaTeX with a modern codebase. And that is not even because the old code is bad - not at all. It's just that a pure Rust or Java implementation would make it so much easier to integrate into other projects. An audited TeX core we could run on untrusted input would be another benefit.
Which brings me to my last point: When researching tectonic I found a fork that attempted a pure Rust port and it nearly worked with examples. There is hope...*
Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#6I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. It also claims reasonable error messages but I only…
I've been looking at https://typst.app
not tex based, but uses CM fonts. I really think that trying to update the programming parts of TeX is necessary. sadly I'm struggling with fonts in svg figures.
but to suddenly see applying effort in this area and getting real traction is treat. so many thanks for the luminaries that put up the last one, but maybe its time for some rework after 40 years.
Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a non-Rust person, mind explaining the comment to a layperson?
I believe u/jjgreen is complaining about the curl|bash pattern being used in a Rust codebase.
I think it's worth mentioning that the install line at https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install looks exactly the same.
Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#8It's a TeX distro that only supports the XeTeX engine. A far cry from "modern", as XeTeX is an abandoned engine that always had quirky compatibility problems.
And it's not "self-contained" either if it downloads packages from the Internet.
Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#9I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. It also claims reasonable error messages but I only…
Not really what you asked for -- but there is an interactive modern typesetter that is programmable and works on trees. It's called TeXmacs - you may want to check out what it can do -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46ON2FB30U
Re: Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support
#10I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. It also claims reasonable error messages but I only…
> I find it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% compatible LaTeX with a modern codebase
That would be a huge effort. Your time would be better spent designing and creating a new typesetting system.