What deters me from Typst is that latex math syntax is nowadays ubiquitous. You write $x^2=1$ and it renders in many places. Learning a new syntax for math expressions is simply not in my interests.
I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
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Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#72Why do CS doctoral candidates have such a fascination with typesetting? I mean, be into whatever you’re into, I guess. But as soon as someone starts talking about LaTEX and how they spent months on their macros, I think “another hapless victim has fallen into LaTEX’s trap.” It’s like an ant lion that feeds on procrastinating students.
A small, but important aspect of typesetting/WYSIWYM is the ability to break down a large document (like a thesis) into discrete sub-components. You could work on each section of your document in an individual .tex file and include it later in your top-level .tex file. This setup works well with VCS like git. Another ergonomic benefit is scripting. For example, if I'm running a series of scripts to generate figures/p…
> The initial setup effort in LaTeX becomes minimal as this cost is "amortized" over the document.
I'm still sour about the 3 days it took me to have something usable for my thesis, and I was starting from an existing template. And it's still not exactly how I want it to be; I gave up on addressing a bug in the reference list.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#73Why do CS doctoral candidates have such a fascination with typesetting? I mean, be into whatever you’re into, I guess. But as soon as someone starts talking about LaTEX and how they spent months on their macros, I think “another hapless victim has fallen into LaTEX’s trap.” It’s like an ant lion that feeds on procrastinating students.
>> Why do CS doctoral candidates have such a fascination with typesetting? Probably because Donald Knuth created TeX and Leslie Lamport created LaTeX. Two of the greatest minds in Computer Science created the tools and used them to write papers and articles that are beautiful. Elegant ideas presented beautifully make reading and writing papers a nicer experience.
Donald Knuth. Please.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#74Why do CS doctoral candidates have such a fascination with typesetting? I mean, be into whatever you’re into, I guess. But as soon as someone starts talking about LaTEX and how they spent months on their macros, I think “another hapless victim has fallen into LaTEX’s trap.” It’s like an ant lion that feeds on procrastinating students.
It's because LaTeX gives us a sense of legitimacy. (it's also why people go overboard with math notation in LaTeX documents, even when prose is more appropriate). It produces documents that look like those produced by professors, and luminaries in the field. If you write equations in Word Equation Editor, your work just doesn't look very serious. It's the same joy I felt when I laser-printed my first newsletter desig…
> If you write equations in Word Equation Editor, your work just doesn't look very serious.
Sez you. MS Word 4.0 for Mac was perfectly alright, putting in less elbow grease than fiddling with LaTex.
And you could get a PDF out of it, via the PostScript print driver.
Never liked those spindly CM Tex fonts, anyway.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#75In thirty years LaTEX will still be open source and probably will be maintained.
Typst appears to be a mix of open source and closed source; the general model here tends to be neglecting the open source part and implementing critical features in the closed source portion. Which is to say, it's unlikely to live beyond the company itself.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#76What deters me from Typst is that latex math syntax is nowadays ubiquitous. You write $x^2=1$ and it renders in many places. Learning a new syntax for math expressions is simply not in my interests.
To be fair $x^2=1$ literally works in typst.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#77I was on the typst train, particularly because its layout engine has some additional vertical control for long documents that latex lacks. However, just about when I was looking at moving over, LLM coding became good or at least good enough, and one area the current crop is bad at is doing layout in anything but latex. Not that they are good at latex, but they are terrible, terrible, terrible at typst. Really bad. Ma…
I understand why people like using LLMs for coding, saves them having to think, but it is deeply frustrating to see it being such a crutch that some people cannot use new tools without it.
I suppose the issue is not new, many people didn't want to use new lanuages before because they couldn't copy snippets from the internet, but it was frustrating then too.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most universities don’t formally train their STEM students in technical writing. At the graduate level, one is basically at the mercy of one’s advisor’s taste, for better or (usually) for worse.
That may be true in US universities, but in Europe students have to write technical reports in almost every course.
That’s a pretty sweeping generalization. In the European university that I went to, CS students definitely didn’t have to write anything longer than long-form exam questions until the bachelor’s thesis.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Why do CS doctoral candidates have such a fascination with typesetting? Probably because Donald Knuth created TeX and Leslie Lamport created LaTeX. Two of the greatest minds in Computer Science created the tools and used them to write papers and articles that are beautiful. Elegant ideas presented beautifully make reading and writing papers a nicer experience.
Donald Knuth. Please.
Corrected. Thank you.
Autocorrect incorrected it for me.
Re: I wrote my PhD Thesis in Typst
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because LaTeX gives us a sense of legitimacy. (it's also why people go overboard with math notation in LaTeX documents, even when prose is more appropriate). It produces documents that look like those produced by professors, and luminaries in the field. If you write equations in Word Equation Editor, your work just doesn't look very serious. It's the same joy I felt when I laser-printed my first newsletter desig…
Most universities don’t formally train their STEM students in technical writing. At the graduate level, one is basically at the mercy of one’s advisor’s taste, for better or (usually) for worse.
The first thing that my PhD advisor did, when I first met him as a foreign student, was to give me this book: https://archive.org/details/technicalwriting0000huck. And I am forever grateful for it.