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Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

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Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#311

Post by koito17 »

didericis wrote: post #308
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.…

> I don't understand why some academic flavor of markdown isn't the standard

I would argue that is exactly what LaTeX is... I studied mathematics in university, and from what I recall, every major publisher provided a LaTeX template for articles and textbooks. Likewise, pretty much every mathematics presentation uses Beamer slides, and most mathematicians are able to "compile" subsets of LaTeX in their head. Websites like MSE and MO use MathJax precisely so that people can write notation as they would on assignments, notes, papers, etc.

Note: I am not saying people particularly like LaTeX as a tool. However, the vast majority of the complaints about LaTeX do seem to be from computer science people. Many mathematics students just create an Overleaf (formerly ShareLaTeX) account and call it a day. Of course, nobody enjoys notes taking 10 seconds to compile, or the first 100 lines of their thesis being a preamble, but the important part is the ability to express notation across a variety of mediums, and the publisher support (as GP mentioned).

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#312

Post by Ericson2314 »

LaTeX is a horrible system, that has some fans who are basically cultists. I suppose people like it cause Knuth, but remember Knuth just made Tex.

Imagine if C++ had stayed a hodge podge of extra tools compiling to C and C macros? That's LaTeX relative to TeX.

Typst should win and destroy all this stuff. If was in control of government science funding, I would just make all the journals accept it immediately, just like the open access arm twisting.

Academics are too precarious to self-advocate, and have been slaves to LaTeX's bullshit for too long. I'm grad procrastinating grad students are writing Typst packages to liberate them.

Best of luck to everyone involved.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#313

Post by SpaceNoodled »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #232
Retr0id wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use LaTeX pretty frequently and although I was reasonably productive I also never felt that I "knew" it. It was a whole lot of googling "how to do x in latex" and pasting in something that was too arcane for me to remember for next time (and/or copy pasting from my own prior documents) In all honesty, I only ever did it to achieve the "LaTeX look". These days I write in markdown or (gasp) wysiwyg editors li…

Thanks to pervasive use of LLMs I predict the future is mostly markdown. It’s the defacto output format for every LLM. It’s simple, plaintext and easy to version control. Hell I wish I could submit my resume as markdown.

What's stopping you?

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#314

Post by cozzyd »

philistine wrote: post #264
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #121

As a long time latex user, and one who is occasionally frustrated by usual things about latex, I have two qualms about attempting to switch to a new system. The first is I already have found solutions to many of my edge cases in latex. Will I have to do this all over again in something like Typst? It can't be so good as to not have any. And when I do encounter them, is the user base big enough to have already encount…

Typst still does not natively support floating images. You can put images at the top of a page, or at the bottom, but there is no native way to declare an image as floating with text wrapping around it.

Does it support the monstrosity that is wrapfig? Writing a proposal would be impossible without that.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#315

Post by nickm12 »

globular-toast wrote: post #289
bombcar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has only ever used LaTeX will be pleasantly surprised by plain TeX - so many of the things that you'd think must be LaTeX macros are actually just TeX itself.

Knuth's The TeXbook is also a delightful read. You'll learn a lot about typography.

I read the TeXBook over 25 years ago when I wanted to learn about how mathematics was typeset. It gave me a lifelong appreciation for and love of the art of typography.

The downside is that once you know, you know and you will see lots of bad typography. Though I genuinely think digital typography has continually and gradually improved over the decades. The typography you get "out of the box" is much better than 20 years ago. Also, high dpi displays rock!

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#316

Post by cozzyd »

josephg wrote: post #20
marginalia_nu wrote: post #3

Assuming it's at all desirable, it's an interesting and recurring problem of how to dislodge existing sub-optimal (sometimes even harmful) standards and notations. Almost nobody wants to learn something new when they already know something similar. Creates a heck of a momentum effect, not just from the practitioners resisting the change, but also available resources and so on.

> Almost nobody wants to learn something new when they already know something similar. Yeah, I wrote a paper using typst - which was much more pleasant to draft. But for the final version submitted to the journal, we ended up converting it to latex because that's what the journal wanted. I think it'll be hard to dislodge latex for academic papers - particularly in CS. But there's plenty of other uses for it. Personal…

Until journals and the arxiv supports it it's going to be a non starter for academic papers

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#317

Post by commandersaki »

mr-karan wrote: post #72

It's great to see Typst getting more visibility. We migrated a real-world workload to it a couple of years back: generating and e-mailing 1.5M+ PDFs daily at my org, Zerodha. Our previous pipeline was LaTeX-based (first pdflatex, then lualatex), but we were constantly fighting cryptic memory errors on large documents and huge Docker image sizes that slowed down boot times of our ephemeral workers. Switching to Typst…

Would you be able to post a sample/mock of a document that you produce, would be very interesting.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#318

Post by BeFlatXIII »

ajkjk wrote: post #192
Rochus wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been using LaTeX for over ten years and I still wouldn't say that I "know" TeX in any meaningful way. I was not only productive but proficient in Typst in a day or two. That's an interesting insight. Do you have an idea why this is? Do you have a CS background?

Isn't that everyone's experience? TeX is a nightmare. It predates all standards for sensible software.

Pure TeX makes MUMPS look well-designed.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#319

Post by tempest_ »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #201
mr-karan wrote: post #72

It's great to see Typst getting more visibility. We migrated a real-world workload to it a couple of years back: generating and e-mailing 1.5M+ PDFs daily at my org, Zerodha. Our previous pipeline was LaTeX-based (first pdflatex, then lualatex), but we were constantly fighting cryptic memory errors on large documents and huge Docker image sizes that slowed down boot times of our ephemeral workers. Switching to Typst…

I’ve worked places that will regularly send generated PDFs of things like statistics or small reports or other generic boring business stuff every week or month. It’s always been some combination of MJML, inline DIY HTML, or PDFs generated with Puppeteer etc. Do you think Typst would be a good fit there too?

We are a python shop and use WeasyPrint. It works well for invoice type things.

I suppose it depends on how much web dev experience is on hand.

Re: Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

#320

Post by leephillips »

vladdoster wrote: post #305

The git repository[0] for your typist to latex filter in the “transform” article[1] you link in the conclusion returns a 403 error :/ I’d love to see the code [0] https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters/code [1] https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters

Do a `git clone` as it says on the page.
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