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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

#121

Post by charlieyu1 »

maweki wrote: post #54

As a computer science researcher, I have hundreds of LaTeX macros, basically a DSL for my specific field of research, where I more or less write out natural language and it comes out as formulae with all the specific symbols and stuff. I think for people who write LaTeX in this kind of professional capacity, the macro language is the killer feature. But I could see fields light on formalism embracing something like t…

Writing LaTeX macros to do something useful is hard. While this particular new system has functions as native object.

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

#122

Post by kps »

dark-star wrote: post #118
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want any plain text in a math block, whether it's a function name or not, you just put quotes around it. Math fonts and plain text fonts should be different. If you put quotes around something, you get plain text font. > If you want implicit multiplication, you need spaces between each letter. Probably the first rule of any good typographical system is that it should not force the user to change how they nor…

We had programming languages that didn't require spaces back in the 80s. It led to code like this: 10 IFA=3ANDB=5THENPRINT"HELLO"

Even better, Fortran allowed spaces anywhere¹

    I FACE. EQ. BUT HEN GOT O1
¹ OK, not in a Hollerith constant.

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

#123

Post by auggierose »

mrazomor wrote: post #103
alephaleph wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Building new systems is actually your only chance of achieving an optimal solution. That's why there is death.

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

#124

Post by vlmutolo »

einpoklum wrote: post #120
jcparkyn wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the biggest ones are: 1. Compilation is ridiculously fast. 2. The language is miles more intuitive, and doesn't require nearly as many hacks. In a handful of hours using typst I've written much more interesting things than I ever would've attempted using latex macros. This might be less important for you, but my latex usage is intermittent, so I've always forgotten it by the next document I write.

And do the intuitiveness and speed not come at the expense of some expressive power limitation?

The speed comes from a clever incremental compilation model.

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

#125

Post by nextaccountic »

alephaleph wrote: post #82
xavxav wrote: post #39

I was looking for a way to procrastinate on my thesis writing, maybe I'll convert it all to typst! More seriously, I am really following this project closely, and now that it's open source I'd like to see if its possible to add the key libraries my field needs: mathpartir, and something like semantics? especially if typst can provide better syntax and errors!

Unfortunately Typst is completely incompatible with LaTeX and its packages, so you either have to go back to working on your thesis or procrastinate even more by reimplementing these yourself!

> Unfortunately Typst is completely incompatible with LaTeX and its packages,

I was under impression this compiled to TeX. So they are doing typesetting by themselves? Why?

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

#126

Post by xcdzvyn »

xico wrote: post #117

I really like the default choices (floor as a “function”, lots of latex heritage, …). The first example is a bit weird though: the word “The” is not left aligned as it would be in a typesetting system, taking perception into account, but merely bounding box aligned with the word below. In practice the beginning of the sentence looks slightly off to the right.

What could floor be but a function?

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

#127

Post by alephaleph »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #111
alephaleph wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first bullet point is incorrect. In normal text, you use # for functions and symbols, i.e. #sym.phi or #emph. In math blocks, you don't use # for stuff like phi or floor but that's because it interprets everything as a function or symbol, with an exception for single letters. If you want any plain text in a math block, whether it's a function name or not, you just put quotes around it. If you want implicit multip…

> If you want any plain text in a math block, whether it's a function name or not, you just put quotes around it. Math fonts and plain text fonts should be different. If you put quotes around something, you get plain text font. > If you want implicit multiplication, you need spaces between each letter. Probably the first rule of any good typographical system is that it should not force the user to change how they nor…

> Math fonts and plain text fonts should be different. If you put quotes around something, you get plain text font.

Why? LaTeX defaults to Computer Modern for both text in math and normal text. And if you want to change just the math font in Typst I'm pretty sure you can do that with a one line set rule.

> Probably the first rule of any good typographical system is that it should not force the user to change how they normally write (barring special exceptions). Any syntax for typography should be additional to this, which is why escape syntax is so good. Forcing the user to put spaces between variables is a no go.

Did you have a habit of putting backslashes before everything before you used TeX? This is a nonsense standard. The math that appears in papers is mostly special characters and so it makes sense to prioritize the syntax for that over implicit multiplication, which is often written with spaces anyway.

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

#128

Post by phforms »

stu2b50 wrote: post #41
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…

The issue with latex is that I don't personally use it every day, and I suspect many people are in that camp. When you just use it ocassionally, all that syntax just falls out of your brain, leading to a frustrating loop where you're constantly relearning latex. In comparison, I use vim keybindings every day. As a result, despite how esoteric it may be, it's well ingrained into my muscle memory.

I feel your struggle. Especially for these cases, I am always writing my own personal documentation (recently switched to .org files for that, which makes navigation pretty convenient in Emacs). It seems redundant since you can find all this knowledge on the web (or ask an AI), but my selection, the context and examples I add and how I organize it makes it especially useful for me when I come back later and need to remember what I have learned.

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

#129

Post by alephaleph »

xavxav wrote: post #115
alephaleph wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Typst is completely incompatible with LaTeX and its packages, so you either have to go back to working on your thesis or procrastinate even more by reimplementing these yourself!

Yes that's what I meant, I'm curious if the Typst api would allow equivalents of those packages.

To be honest I wouldn't recommend it just yet. Right now Typst doesn't expose that many layout primitives for math -- stuff like fractions are special-cased in the compiler. It all should be theoretically possible -- technically everything you need is there -- but from looking over the documentation and experimenting with this my guess would be that it would feel more like implementing your own layout engine with Typst's programming language than gluing existing stuff together.

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

#130

Post by alanbernstein »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #126
xico wrote: post #117

I really like the default choices (floor as a “function”, lots of latex heritage, …). The first example is a bit weird though: the word “The” is not left aligned as it would be in a typesetting system, taking perception into account, but merely bounding box aligned with the word below. In practice the beginning of the sentence looks slightly off to the right.

What could floor be but a function?

A disjoint pair of brackets?
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