3 ms·

Where is the comparison with markdown? Coming from a quarto/Rstudio background here

josephg 3y ago
Markdown on its own isn’t in the same league as latex and similar systems. Off the top of my head, markdown doesn’t support: Figures outside the flow of the document, references, layouts (columns, etc), comments, formulas, a standard and good looking pdf output, page breaks, custom layouts for authors / abstract / etc, numbered chapters, autogenerated table of contents, custom blocks with different formatting, footnotes, appendixes and a whole lot more. There are various “batteries included” markdown renderers - maybe like quarto - which add mermaid for diagrams and a few other features. But I’ve never seen a paper written in markdown with the same polish as what latex produces. It just doesn’t have the depth of features that you need for making a professional looking paper. Latex ships with all of that out of the box. If their target market is people writing scientific papers, it makes sense that markdown isn’t in the list. Markdown isn’t a serious competitor.
jansan 3y ago
This is not the same league, maybe not even the same sport. Markdown is for convenient and quick "good enough" looking text editing. It is very good at what it is supposed to do, but the limitations are quite obvious. Typst has its focus on editing scientific documents, something that Markdown was just not made for.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago
  I agree they are playing different sports! Ideally, unrendered markdown still provides a first-class reading experience. I don't think Typst has that as a design goal.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    Typst texts are quite readable, the language has explicit support to make it as good as feasible (e.g. longer text parameters can be passed unquoted within a [] block, so it is still left readable). Plus you can abstract away more complex configs inside a function, and end up with `#myFunc [My normal unquoted text]` But it is apples to oranges, you can properly format text to book editor capabilities with typst, while you can only do basic stuff with markdown.

Markdown on its own isn’t in the same league as latex and similar systems. Off the top of my head, markdown doesn’t support: Figures outside the flow of the document, references, layouts (columns, etc), comments, formulas, a standard and good looking pdf output, page breaks, custom layouts for authors / abstract / etc, numbered chapters, autogenerated table of contents, custom blocks with different formatting, footnotes, appendixes and a whole lot more. There are various “batteries included” markdown renderers - maybe like quarto - which add mermaid for diagrams and a few other features. But I’ve never seen a paper written in markdown with the same polish as what latex produces. It just doesn’t have the depth of features that you need for making a professional looking paper. Latex ships with all of that out of the box. If their target market is people writing scientific papers, it makes sense that markdown isn’t in the list. Markdown isn’t a serious competitor.

jansan 3y ago

This is not the same league, maybe not even the same sport. Markdown is for convenient and quick "good enough" looking text editing. It is very good at what it is supposed to do, but the limitations are quite obvious. Typst has its focus on editing scientific documents, something that Markdown was just not made for.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anonymous_sorry 3y ago
I agree they are playing different sports! Ideally, unrendered markdown still provides a first-class reading experience. I don't think Typst has that as a design goal.
- kaba0 3y ago
  Typst texts are quite readable, the language has explicit support to make it as good as feasible (e.g. longer text parameters can be passed unquoted within a [] block, so it is still left readable). Plus you can abstract away more complex configs inside a function, and end up with `#myFunc [My normal unquoted text]` But it is apples to oranges, you can properly format text to book editor capabilities with typst, while you can only do basic stuff with markdown.