Live data from Hacker News

Typst 0.14

typst.app

111–120 of 171 posts

Re: Typst 0.14

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I compile LaTeX files, I use tectonic¹ which automatically download dependencies, compiles in one pass, and hides temporary files. But the regulars users of LaTeX I know all use a web interface — IIRC, it's an instance of Overleaf² installed by their university, with real-time rendering. So when I read your list, I had these tools in mind, and the only items that made sense to me were: 2. (minor compared to Over…

tangent: what syntax lets you use superscripts in HN comments? test^1

Unicode superscript characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_supersc...

Re: Typst 0.14

#112

I write this in pretty much every Typst thread. Here are some notes I wrote when I started out with typst when comparing with LaTeX and some recent additions: 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 be…

When I compile LaTeX files, I use tectonic¹ which automatically download dependencies, compiles in one pass, and hides temporary files. But the regulars users of LaTeX I know all use a web interface — IIRC, it's an instance of Overleaf² installed by their university, with real-time rendering. So when I read your list, I had these tools in mind, and the only items that made sense to me were: 2. (minor compared to Over…

Yeah fair enough, people have different experiences.

I would like to address that you read my point for margins/footers/etc. being difficult in Latex is dubious. (Also not sure why you mention the bibliography thing as dubious as it was a real issue of Typst, but shrug.)

A few years ago I spent many hours trying to figure out why a fancy footer wasn't rendering in a Latex document. I wanted a Page x of y counter in the footer which requires a few extra packages. So I try adding it, using two different methods \fancyfoot and \cfoot that I found on StackOverflow & OverLeaf, yet neither worked. I thought I was doing the incantations incorrectly. Spent endless hours figuring out what was going on, until I broke down and created a minimal example by selectively removing stuff which helped uncover that it was rendering but off page. The culprit was an overly large \fancyfoot that I hacked in to give a long baseline because I wanted to use up a huge chunk of the page due to Latex generous margins.

Yes I got things wrong, but Latex really didn't make this stuff easy, and took many hours to troubleshoot -- though it did improve my Latex troubleshooting skills.

In contrast setting layout parameters such as margins and specifying a footer is effortless in Typst and doesn't have that footskip footgun (at least I didn't encounter it):

    #set page(
        width: 210mm,
        height: 297mm,
        margin: (top: 15.875mm, bottom: 25.4mm, left: 15.875mm, right: 15.875mm),
        footer: context [
          #set align(center)
          #set text(size: 10pt)
          Page #counter(page).display() of #counter(page).final().first()
        ]
      )
Anyway, that's my justification for that point.

Re: Typst 0.14

#113
I really wish I could use Typst, but to be honest, it doesn't work with any journal I know of, let alone arXiv. It feels like a chicken-and-egg problem to me; I can't see most people who use LaTeX moving over unless journals and preprint servers adopt it, and I can't see journals or preprint servers adopting it unless people move over. Still, it's early days, I and wish the community good luck and I genuinely hope that one day I can ditch LaTeX for something markdown-like.

Re: Typst 0.14

#114

There's usually some confusion about this, so to clarify in advance: - The Typst online editor is proprietary: https://typst.app - The Typst compiler/CLI is open source: https://github.com/typst/typst I hear that the online editor is quite good, but personally I've only ever used the CLI. I originally picked up Typst as yet another replacement for PowerPoint (replacing my use of Marp), but have since used it for a po…

isitreallyfoss.com did a break down on typst that goes more in-depth

https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/typst/

It seems mostly fine except for this bit:

> The compiler includes a package manager “Typst Universe” that may connect to servers owned and operated by Typst GmbH

Re: Typst 0.14

#115
post #23

The killer features of LaTeX that does not let me go with typst (Although I like my typst generated resume) as an academic are. 1. Beamer, I create multiple slide decks per week and the out of the box setup that beamer provides with different styles and fonts for different needs are unmatched. The efforts to generate some of this on typst is not there yet. 2. Generating figures using tikz and be able to modify it on…

Maybe you have already checked these, but in case you haven't: - https://touying-typ.github.io/ Creating slides in Typst - https://cetz-package.github.io/ CeTZ is a package that allows for drawing with Typst with an API inspired by TikZ and Processing. It also provides plotting and chart libraries and is used in several other packages to create circuit, fretboard and more diagrams - maybe try getting your team to use…

These are great suggestions, but did I understand that suggest git as an alternative to overleaf? That's... not at all reasonable, as well as completely missing what problems overleaf solves for which people. Overleaf ist git und the hood. But what it really provides is Google Docs style collaboration on Latex documents.

Reviewing the changes I review in Overleaf in GitHub pull requests would be incredibly painful and introduce a completely new, convoluted and unintuitive (until you're used to it) workflow for collaborative editing.

Re: Typst 0.14

#116

I write this in pretty much every Typst thread. Here are some notes I wrote when I started out with typst when comparing with LaTeX and some recent additions: 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 be…

When I compile LaTeX files, I use tectonic¹ which automatically download dependencies, compiles in one pass, and hides temporary files. But the regulars users of LaTeX I know all use a web interface — IIRC, it's an instance of Overleaf² installed by their university, with real-time rendering. So when I read your list, I had these tools in mind, and the only items that made sense to me were: 2. (minor compared to Over…

> 2. (minor compared to Overleaf) typst compiles faster.

I would argue that this isn't minor. At least in my opinion, it makes a big difference.

Overleaf, already 3 pages into a document, with a couple of TikZ figures, was getting slow, as in multiple seconds wait for each save.

Typst, on the other hand (Tinymist in VS Code) is really realtime. Text updating within some tens of milliseconds, and figures included in far below a second. It really _feels_ instant, and to me that changes the experience a lot.

Re: Typst 0.14

#117
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What LLMs? In my experience they do a terrible job with Typst. Very frequently ChatGPT and Gemini will produce code that doesnt work. Im not sure if it's using an older syntax or just hallucinating. Additionally, it's rarely able to fix it after I provide the error and even copy-past docs. Maybe I was just unlucky or you had better luck with another model. But I was very surprised to here this because Typst is my chi…

This was a few months ago, but mainly Claude Sonnet 3.5 IIRC. You can't escape hallucinations, of course, but they can be mitigated somewhat. Don't ask it to generate a bunch of code at once. Feed it a snippet of code, and tell it precisely what you want it to do. These are general LLM rules applicable to any language and project, and I've had success with them with Typst. I also used it just to get explanations, or…

It failed miserably with very simple requests. It was wrong but it wasn't clear if it was hallucinating or simply using old syntax.

I did not try Claude though. Perhaps that performs better.

edit: I just prompted chatGPT with this and pasted the result into the Typst editor. 20 compile errors.

>Make a Typst doc with two columns per page and US page dimensions

Same prompt but for Latex and pasted in overleaf. No problems.

Re: Typst 0.14

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used LaTeX for decades and had convinced myself nothing could ever replace it. Just this month, however, I converted to Typst for a large project. Absolutely no regrets: undying respect to the great Knuth, but the experience with Typst is already simply better on almost every axis. I use TinyMist with vscode and the development experience is terrific. I was modifying templates within a day of picking it up, which—-…

famously knuth was trying to (and pretty much did) solve digital typesetting not create a nice piece of hci so this is all as it should be or at least as might be expected

Staying in his lane, living his best life—dropping incredible things to humanity ever now and then. I had to check since I hadn’t thought about it for… a decade apparently, but looks like TAOCP 4B came out a couple years ago.

Re: Typst 0.14

#120
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed... I wonder to what extent the author of hayro did this work specifically for Typst or if they would have done it anyway.

Author here! Resolving one of the most-requested Typst features was definitely a big motivation for me, but I wouldn't say this was the only reason. I've done a lot of previous work on PDF (see e.g. the krilla library, although also mostly in the context of Typst), so I was already pretty familiar with how PDF works. In addition to that, I also just finished writing my master's thesis about 2D rendering (also in Rust…

Impressive work, congrats!
Post reply on HN