7 ms·

Tectonic – A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support

100 points by Gadiguibou 4y ago

weinzierl 4y ago
I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. It also claims reasonable error messages but I only ran it on error-free files, so I cannot tell. One small downside is that in my direct comparison with lualatex it was always marginally slower. Another one is that it is not a rewrite but still based on the old TeX code. I think tectonic is a great project but generally speaking I find it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% compatible LaTeX with a modern codebase. And that is not even because the old code is bad - not at all. It's just that a pure Rust or Java implementation would make it so much easier to integrate into other projects. An audited TeX core we could run on untrusted input would be another benefit. Which brings me to my last point: When researching tectonic I found a fork that attempted a pure Rust port and it nearly worked with examples. There is hope...*
- convolvatron 4y ago
  I've been looking at https://typst.app https://typst.app not tex based, but uses CM fonts. I really think that trying to update the programming parts of TeX is necessary. sadly I'm struggling with fonts in svg figures. but to suddenly see applying effort in this area and getting real traction is treat. so many thanks for the luminaries that put up the last one, but maybe its time for some rework after 40 years.
  - nsajko 4y ago
    Sadly it still doesn't support vector graphics. A TeX-killer must also include a replacement for something like PGF, Tikz, Metapost, etc.
    - jcparkyn 4y ago
      It supports SVGs. Not a replacement for all the options in latex, but that certainly qualifies as "vector graphics".
      - nsajko 4y ago
        I'm talking about vector graphics as an integral part of the document, not mere inclusion of external graphics.
- lejalv 4y ago
  Not really what you asked for -- but there is an interactive modern typesetter that is programmable and works on trees. It's called TeXmacs - you may want to check out what it can do -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46ON2FB30U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46ON2FB30U
- nsajko 4y ago
  > I find it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% compatible LaTeX with a modern codebase That would be a huge effort. Your time would be better spent designing and creating a new typesetting system.
  - bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
    A new typesetting system will be very hard to get people to adopt. There are a million packages and existing documents that would have to be ported over. At this point, compatibility with TeX is a critical feature, not just a nice-to-have.
  - weinzierl 4y ago
    New typesetting systems are a dime a dozen and none of them is getting anywhere. Also in almost all cases HTML/CSS is what you want to use anyway. TeX is pretty niche but it fills that niche perfectly. A 100% compatible LaTeX that plays nicely in today's infrastructure is all I want.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  Integrating TeX into a program inside exactly impossible now though. Pandoc gets along fine. Also the way to trust code is isolation rather than verification, even rust has unsafe.
  - weinzierl 4y ago
    Isolation is a good second line of defense. It's not going to prevent malicious input to produce malicious output. At least not until you go as far as Qubes OS and you squeeze everything through a rasterized bitmap.
- alerighi 4y ago
  Why rewrite TeX? To me TeX is one of the example of what a software project should aim to be, arrive to a stable version where it does what it should do and it work reasonably well. That was the initial idea of Knuth (in fact the version is a number that approaches PI one decimal at a time). This is the contrary of the "modern" philosophy that says that we need to constantly modify, update or rewrite a software in "modern" languages even if it's a huge effort and risks introducing bugs that were not present in the original version. Well, at least if we want to rewrite it let's just have to wait 10 years, then we can fed all the codebase to ChatGPT and ask for a new fancy Rust version! Regarding of integration, TeX follows the (to me still relevant) UNIX philosophy that a software can be called by another software and the input/output communicates in a pipe. Nowadays we have even containers that let us distribute the software as a single unit so we don't have to worry about installing multiple files on a system. Not a big deal, in the end.
  - jhanschoo 4y ago
    I don't think you realize that 1. Most people aren't compiling with tex->dvips->ps2pdf anymore, most people with basic requirements compile with pdftex for more robust hyperlink and navigation pane, etc. features 2. People who want Unicode support and support for modern font files are using xetex or luatex 3. What has been proposed isn't a new tex compiler but more like a package manager for 3rd-party tex packages, using the already established xetex compiler to compile. Whereas historically you would download the whole distribution (or a predefined subset thereof) onto your system versioned by year (e.g. TexLive 2020) eating up GiBs of space, this allows you to download just what you need for your document.
nsajko 4y ago
It's a TeX distro that only supports the XeTeX engine. A far cry from "modern", as XeTeX is an abandoned engine that always had quirky compatibility problems. And it's not "self-contained" either if it downloads packages from the Internet.
- qwertfisch 4y ago
  XeTeX allows me to use the system’s Truetype/Opentype fonts and Unicode without any of pdfTeX/Metafont voodoo necessary in previous times, and it did this flawlessly for more than ten years for me. LuaTeX took ages to finally get a 1.0 version, so there was at least a period of 8 to 10 years where XeTeX was simply the best and only solution.
jjgreen 4y ago
Written in Rust! Can you tell? curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://drop-sh.fullyjustified.net | sh
- digdugdirk 4y ago
  As a non-Rust person, mind explaining the comment to a layperson?
  - cryptonector 4y ago
    I believe u/jjgreen is complaining about the curl|bash pattern being used in a Rust codebase.
    - red_trumpet 4y ago
      I think it's worth mentioning that the install line at https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install looks exactly the same.
      - bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
        Yep, that's the joke.
- xcdzvyn 4y ago
  Because safety is our #1 priority. Hah.
- cstrahan 4y ago
  Let’s say, for example, that I invite a friend over and offer them a glass of water. Would you be similarly upset to find that I don’t recommend that they first send a sample of the water to be tested for purity before consuming said glass of water? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I would be fine with my friend being cautious and wanting to get the water tested (though I doubt that would ever happen in practice)… but if he trusts me to give him clean water, I doubt you’d raise any fuss over him just downing a glass. Why/how is this any different? Anyone that wants to inspect the shell script can amend that line to first save and view the script. Are you thinking it’s never appropriate to trust such a script implicitly? If that’s the case, I’d love to hear about your workflow for checking the packages you install (e.g. debs can run arbitrary post install scripts, and do you know that a malicious actor with signing keys didn’t taint the binaries therein?), how you inspect all JavaScript for sandbox escaping exploits before viewing anything on the web, how you’ve ensured your hardware itself isn’t backdoored, etc. The complaints of piping directly into shell from an HTTPS server strikes me as nothing more than a “no real technologists does $THING!” sort of elitism, though I’m open to being shown otherwise. A non-answer would be to propose that one first fetch a package signing key and install from your package manager of choice — if the script we’re complaining about can’t be trusted, there’s no reason to trust that the key file is any better with it being hosted in exactly the same way… unless you’re going to propose that you use something along the lines of web-of-trust to inspire further confidence that the signing key is authentic; at that point, though, your problem is with how 99.9% of third-party software packages (with respect to your distro of choice) are distributed - every PPA I’ve ever seen (docker, mongodb, whatever) at best tells you to fetch a key from some HTTPS server, and that’s all. It would then strike me as suspect to single out curl|bash (while additionally implying something about Rust users).

100 points by Gadiguibou 4y ago

I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized binary. When you run ’tectonic file.tex’ it will download everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. It also claims reasonable error messages but I only ran it on error-free files, so I cannot tell. One small downside is that in my direct comparison with lualatex it was always marginally slower. Another one is that it is not a rewrite but still based on the old TeX code. I think tectonic is a great project but generally speaking I find it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% compatible LaTeX with a modern codebase. And that is not even because the old code is bad - not at all. It's just that a pure Rust or Java implementation would make it so much easier to integrate into other projects. An audited TeX core we could run on untrusted input would be another benefit. Which brings me to my last point: When researching tectonic I found a fork that attempted a pure Rust port and it nearly worked with examples. There is hope...*

convolvatron 4y ago
I've been looking at https://typst.app https://typst.app not tex based, but uses CM fonts. I really think that trying to update the programming parts of TeX is necessary. sadly I'm struggling with fonts in svg figures. but to suddenly see applying effort in this area and getting real traction is treat. so many thanks for the luminaries that put up the last one, but maybe its time for some rework after 40 years.
- nsajko 4y ago
  Sadly it still doesn't support vector graphics. A TeX-killer must also include a replacement for something like PGF, Tikz, Metapost, etc.
  - jcparkyn 4y ago
    It supports SVGs. Not a replacement for all the options in latex, but that certainly qualifies as "vector graphics".
    - nsajko 4y ago
      I'm talking about vector graphics as an integral part of the document, not mere inclusion of external graphics.
lejalv 4y ago
Not really what you asked for -- but there is an interactive modern typesetter that is programmable and works on trees. It's called TeXmacs - you may want to check out what it can do -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46ON2FB30U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46ON2FB30U
nsajko 4y ago
> I find it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% compatible LaTeX with a modern codebase That would be a huge effort. Your time would be better spent designing and creating a new typesetting system.
- bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
  A new typesetting system will be very hard to get people to adopt. There are a million packages and existing documents that would have to be ported over. At this point, compatibility with TeX is a critical feature, not just a nice-to-have.
- weinzierl 4y ago
  New typesetting systems are a dime a dozen and none of them is getting anywhere. Also in almost all cases HTML/CSS is what you want to use anyway. TeX is pretty niche but it fills that niche perfectly. A 100% compatible LaTeX that plays nicely in today's infrastructure is all I want.
mhh__ 4y ago
Integrating TeX into a program inside exactly impossible now though. Pandoc gets along fine. Also the way to trust code is isolation rather than verification, even rust has unsafe.
- weinzierl 4y ago
  Isolation is a good second line of defense. It's not going to prevent malicious input to produce malicious output. At least not until you go as far as Qubes OS and you squeeze everything through a rasterized bitmap.
alerighi 4y ago
Why rewrite TeX? To me TeX is one of the example of what a software project should aim to be, arrive to a stable version where it does what it should do and it work reasonably well. That was the initial idea of Knuth (in fact the version is a number that approaches PI one decimal at a time). This is the contrary of the "modern" philosophy that says that we need to constantly modify, update or rewrite a software in "modern" languages even if it's a huge effort and risks introducing bugs that were not present in the original version. Well, at least if we want to rewrite it let's just have to wait 10 years, then we can fed all the codebase to ChatGPT and ask for a new fancy Rust version! Regarding of integration, TeX follows the (to me still relevant) UNIX philosophy that a software can be called by another software and the input/output communicates in a pipe. Nowadays we have even containers that let us distribute the software as a single unit so we don't have to worry about installing multiple files on a system. Not a big deal, in the end.
- jhanschoo 4y ago
  I don't think you realize that 1. Most people aren't compiling with tex->dvips->ps2pdf anymore, most people with basic requirements compile with pdftex for more robust hyperlink and navigation pane, etc. features 2. People who want Unicode support and support for modern font files are using xetex or luatex 3. What has been proposed isn't a new tex compiler but more like a package manager for 3rd-party tex packages, using the already established xetex compiler to compile. Whereas historically you would download the whole distribution (or a predefined subset thereof) onto your system versioned by year (e.g. TexLive 2020) eating up GiBs of space, this allows you to download just what you need for your document.

nsajko 4y ago

It's a TeX distro that only supports the XeTeX engine. A far cry from "modern", as XeTeX is an abandoned engine that always had quirky compatibility problems. And it's not "self-contained" either if it downloads packages from the Internet.

qwertfisch 4y ago
XeTeX allows me to use the system’s Truetype/Opentype fonts and Unicode without any of pdfTeX/Metafont voodoo necessary in previous times, and it did this flawlessly for more than ten years for me. LuaTeX took ages to finally get a 1.0 version, so there was at least a period of 8 to 10 years where XeTeX was simply the best and only solution.

jjgreen 4y ago

Written in Rust! Can you tell? curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://drop-sh.fullyjustified.net | sh

digdugdirk 4y ago
As a non-Rust person, mind explaining the comment to a layperson?
- cryptonector 4y ago
  I believe u/jjgreen is complaining about the curl|bash pattern being used in a Rust codebase.
  - red_trumpet 4y ago
    I think it's worth mentioning that the install line at https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install looks exactly the same.
    - bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
      Yep, that's the joke.
xcdzvyn 4y ago
Because safety is our #1 priority. Hah.
cstrahan 4y ago
Let’s say, for example, that I invite a friend over and offer them a glass of water. Would you be similarly upset to find that I don’t recommend that they first send a sample of the water to be tested for purity before consuming said glass of water? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I would be fine with my friend being cautious and wanting to get the water tested (though I doubt that would ever happen in practice)… but if he trusts me to give him clean water, I doubt you’d raise any fuss over him just downing a glass. Why/how is this any different? Anyone that wants to inspect the shell script can amend that line to first save and view the script. Are you thinking it’s never appropriate to trust such a script implicitly? If that’s the case, I’d love to hear about your workflow for checking the packages you install (e.g. debs can run arbitrary post install scripts, and do you know that a malicious actor with signing keys didn’t taint the binaries therein?), how you inspect all JavaScript for sandbox escaping exploits before viewing anything on the web, how you’ve ensured your hardware itself isn’t backdoored, etc. The complaints of piping directly into shell from an HTTPS server strikes me as nothing more than a “no real technologists does $THING!” sort of elitism, though I’m open to being shown otherwise. A non-answer would be to propose that one first fetch a package signing key and install from your package manager of choice — if the script we’re complaining about can’t be trusted, there’s no reason to trust that the key file is any better with it being hosted in exactly the same way… unless you’re going to propose that you use something along the lines of web-of-trust to inspire further confidence that the signing key is authentic; at that point, though, your problem is with how 99.9% of third-party software packages (with respect to your distro of choice) are distributed - every PPA I’ve ever seen (docker, mongodb, whatever) at best tells you to fetch a key from some HTTPS server, and that’s all. It would then strike me as suspect to single out curl|bash (while additionally implying something about Rust users).