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Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

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Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#101

Post by airstrike »

V__ wrote: post #94
airstrike wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, this is fantastic. It doesn't solve the DSL part but it does solve the output-to-PDF-using-CSS part. They also seem so nice! I guess I can clobber together my own DSL and then run with this. I can't thank you enough

Glad to be of help. Just out of curiosity, what's your use case?

Starting my own company to solve other people's use cases :-)

I'm a business "end user" who also loves programming. After 10+ years being a part of both worlds, I feel like I have a very strong vision for how these tools should work, so I've decided to build my own. It's a daunting task, but if I can leverage existing tools, maybe it's just a matter of gluing everything together neatly

Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#102

Post by piz »

BrandonS113 wrote: post #69

Its doomed to failure. Latex is horrible but makes beautiful documents and the relevant world either uses latex or Mircosoft Office. Why use anything else? Latex lives by the community of people who use latex for their work and to collaborate. All know 20 year old latex documents will be compilable in 20 years. No competitor outside of Microsoft can survive that.

> Its doomed to failure.

Let's agree to disagree. So many people can't use LaTeX properly because it's too esoteric and dream of using something different than Office.

Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#103

Post by mrazomor »

alephaleph wrote: post #97
mrazomor wrote: post #75

LaTeX is simple if you: - have a good template (most of the conferences & some other parts of academia provide this), - use a decent IDE (many LaTeX editors I tried in the past were great, now I'm fine with just vim), - stick with the basics (text, tables, formulas, images; it's easy to Google it). The last point is what matters the most. As soon as you want to change the margins, stylize the table in a different way…

I don't think the fact that you need to look up and copy recipes and download packages to do most complex formatting is a strength of LaTeX, and one of Typst's stated design goals is to make formatting composable enough that you don't need a package for everything. But guess only time will tell whether that works out. The other selling point you're missing though is that Typst's compiler is designed for fast incremen…

Typst still has a syntax that one needs to learn (or Google it).

Overleaf's slowness is not a LaTeX issue. I was using LaTeX IDEs with near-instant previews more than 10y ago.

Then again, why such emphasis on the preview? Both LaTeX and Typst are not WYSIWYG. The content is already in front of you. There's space for improvement, but building new systems is not the most optimal solution.

Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#105

Post by kzrdude »

justeleblanc wrote: post #77
SCLeo wrote: post #46

So far, my favorite thing about it is matching parentheses scale automatically. No more \left(\right) nonsenses.

Except that \left\right is almost always the wrong solution. It's one of my pet peeves when collaborating on papers. Your parentheses shouldn't scale all the way up and down your equation, unless you want them to be disgustingly tall (just try \left( \int_0^1 \frac{dx}{x} \right) to see what I mean). You should choose \big[lr], \bigg[lr], \Big[lr] or \Bigg[lr] based on what looks good, and the computer is not good at…

Their size order seems to be \big, \Big, \bigg, \Bigg

Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#106

Post by YoumuChan »

einpoklum wrote: post #100

So, I'm a moderately-experienced LaTeX user. What is the argument for me switching to typst? I read the repository's README, and would be tempted to consider it as a complete newbie with limited needs, but I couldn't find the compelling argument for ditching (La)TeX in favor of this. Especially given the size of the LaTeX community and availability and accessibility of (sometimes hacky) LaTeX solutions for a zillion…

Apart from writing papers, I also use LaTeX to make presentations accompanying the papers (beamer). I make heavy use of tikz to create figures (I work in geometry-related field). The workflow is painful (slow compilation, bad overleaf support) to say the least. If typst could meet this need in the future (seems lacking at the moment), I won't hesitate to make a switch.

Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#107

Post by kzrdude »

WolfOliver wrote: post #96

In my opinion, markdown, LaTeX, HTML, ... is all a cognitive overhead distracting you form writing your content. That is why I started to work on MonsterWriter [1] [1] https://www.monsterwriter.app/

I like programming, so the "programming" parts of latex are just a procrastrination trap for me. I'd like something that's not programming please.

Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#109

Post by jcparkyn »

nohaydeprobleme wrote: post #42
shuntress wrote: post #25

I have spent probably too much time trying to gain a comfortable level of proficiency with LaTex and I have not been able too. Maybe I just don't use it often enough but I always now find myself just using HTML/CSS instead. Even when the thing I'm laying out is specifically just something to be printed. I feel similarly about LaTeX and Vim. I like them. They are interesting. I appreciate the history around their deve…

If you need to share a professional document that involves mathematical expressions and equations, LaTeX is very helpful as a tool to use. The need arises if you are a professional or student registered in a course in mathematics or computer science. It's much easier to type multiple lines of equations, with the equation signs aligned, in LaTeX than in Word. It's a bit of a grind, but you can learn the fundamentals o…

> It's much easier to type multiple lines of equations, with the equation signs aligned, in LaTeX than in Word.

I actually disagree. The equation editor in word is really quite good (if a little laggy sometimes), once you learn the shortcuts. Being able to see your fractions laid out properly is a massive productivity boost, and makes it much easier to quickly find the part you want to edit. The dealbreaker for me is the lack of equation numbering, without doing quite a few hacks.

Personally, I'd still take the LyX math editor over Word though, for the macros and better performance.

Re: Typst, a new markup-based typesetting system, is now open source

#110

Post by jcparkyn »

nohaydeprobleme wrote: post #62
soperj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vim is pretty easy to remember though, LaTex is something entirely different.

That's fascinating. I genuinely believe you, but in my personal experience, I've felt the opposite way. A first-year computer science course I took required all the students to develop a basic understanding of LaTeX in 1-2 weeks, and we used LaTeX the rest of the term. I then got used to LaTeX commands, because in my personal experience, I've had plenty of opportunities as part of coursework to use LaTeX (oftentimes,…

> Vim can be an essential tool for editing remote files

Even this point is being weakened by how good vscode's remote editing support is.

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