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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

#61

Post by pkulak »

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…

Well, if you learn Vim you will use it every day (if you ever program, or work with any markup). And that's even if you never open the Vim editor itself; the bindings are available everywhere.

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

#62

Post by nohaydeprobleme »

soperj wrote: post #35
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…

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, it was required). In the meantime, I haven't yet learned Vim because I've read that it takes a while to learn—at least four weeks of consistent practice, often even longer, e.g. according to this discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15414544

For myself, as someone without personal experience using Vim, LaTeX is essential to my work with commands that I've internalized, whereas Sublime Text and IDEs like Visual Studio Code and PyCharm have been great for editing code (though I recognize that Vim can be an essential tool for editing remote files). I'm curious to learn from others about why Vim can be a better tool for certain tasks, even for local files, in contrast to Sublime or IDEs.

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

#63

Post by kirillbobyrev »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #52

Latex is "typesetting-complete". This language is not, so it's not a replacement. For instance * The syntax does not use escape sequences for functions/symbols, i.e. phi instead of \phi or floor instead of \floor. You will inevitably run into situations where, for instance, you want to write the letters phi, and have to resort to some ugly hack to write the natural language. This is not okay. * There is reasonable sy…

> Latex is "typesetting-complete". This language is not, so it's not a replacement.

Based the documentation (and the title), it isn't meant to be _a replacement_, but rather _an alternative_ and that's totally OK. Not everything needs a drop-in replacement.

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

#64

Post by LelouBil »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #52

Latex is "typesetting-complete". This language is not, so it's not a replacement. For instance * The syntax does not use escape sequences for functions/symbols, i.e. phi instead of \phi or floor instead of \floor. You will inevitably run into situations where, for instance, you want to write the letters phi, and have to resort to some ugly hack to write the natural language. This is not okay. * There is reasonable sy…

> The syntax does not use escape sequences for functions/symbols, i.e. phi instead of \phi or floor instead of \floor. You will inevitably run into situations where, for instance, you want to write the letters phi, and have to resort to some ugly hack to write the natural language. This is not okay.

Down in the README it's written that you need to put identifiers into quotes to write them in math blocks

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

#65

Post by laurmaedje »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #52

Latex is "typesetting-complete". This language is not, so it's not a replacement. For instance * The syntax does not use escape sequences for functions/symbols, i.e. phi instead of \phi or floor instead of \floor. You will inevitably run into situations where, for instance, you want to write the letters phi, and have to resort to some ugly hack to write the natural language. This is not okay. * There is reasonable sy…

If you want to write the letters phi, you can write p h i if you mean implied multiplication or "phi" if it should be a single unit. In general, Typst's syntax is designed to make every sequence of characters expressible, just like TeX.

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

#67

Post by sampo »

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…

> I have spent probably too much time trying to gain a comfortable level of proficiency with LaTex and I have not been able too.

I got quite comfortable with LaTeX after I read a book. For me it was the Kopka & Daly book. Maybe these days it's a bit old-fashioned to get familiar with a programming language, by reading a book? But I think it works.

https://www.latex-project.org/help/books/

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

#69

Post by BrandonS113 »

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.

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

#70

Post by datadeft »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #52

Latex is "typesetting-complete". This language is not, so it's not a replacement. For instance * The syntax does not use escape sequences for functions/symbols, i.e. phi instead of \phi or floor instead of \floor. You will inevitably run into situations where, for instance, you want to write the letters phi, and have to resort to some ugly hack to write the natural language. This is not okay. * There is reasonable sy…

I need 80% of LaTex with 10% of its problems. Typst, could be exactly that.
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