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Traditional style and my own preference dictate that indentations separate paragraphs, so the first paragraph after a non-paragraph element (like a heading or a

Traditional style and my own preference dictate that indentations separate paragraphs, so the first paragraph after a non-paragraph element (like a heading or a list) should not be indented. This is a common typographic convention, but to do it in CSS is impossible in the general case without dozens, maybe hundreds of selectors to handle every special case. In Typst, you just give paragraphs a first-line-indent, and they know when to use it. p+p {text-indent:5em} seems pretty simple? I just did a quick test and it seemed to work when I broke up a few paragraphs with an h1, a ul, and a div. This isn't anything esoteric, it's CSS2 stuff that's been working for twenty years. Though "typst breaks lines 500% better than most browsers" is a compelling argument on its own.

strogonoff 2y ago
There’s both very little and a lot that can’t be done in CSS when it comes to proper typesetting. p + p { text-indent } absolutely works and has been my go-to method of implementing proper paragraph indentation for as long as I can remember. Impressive drop caps, hanging punctuation, etc. are possible with some effort. However, balancing lines, hyphenation, eliminating rivers is something that browsers don’t do or do not as well, and custom kerning is painful. If there is something that handles typesetting on par with InDesign but without the bloat and in a friendlier format, that’d be neat, but I wonder how long would it remain bloat-free considering features that would be needed.
- glompers 2y ago
  What about the non-cloud version of InDesign (CS2, maybe CS3?) that Adobe made free for download around 2013-2014? This timing was related to the Adobe Creative Cloud being released in 2013, eleven years ago this week. While I believe others at Adobe later backtracked and decided that the noncloud suite was no longer free _and never had been_, that has been discussed on HN elsewhere.

strogonoff 2y ago

There’s both very little and a lot that can’t be done in CSS when it comes to proper typesetting. p + p { text-indent } absolutely works and has been my go-to method of implementing proper paragraph indentation for as long as I can remember. Impressive drop caps, hanging punctuation, etc. are possible with some effort. However, balancing lines, hyphenation, eliminating rivers is something that browsers don’t do or do not as well, and custom kerning is painful. If there is something that handles typesetting on par with InDesign but without the bloat and in a friendlier format, that’d be neat, but I wonder how long would it remain bloat-free considering features that would be needed.

glompers 2y ago
What about the non-cloud version of InDesign (CS2, maybe CS3?) that Adobe made free for download around 2013-2014? This timing was related to the Adobe Creative Cloud being released in 2013, eleven years ago this week. While I believe others at Adobe later backtracked and decided that the noncloud suite was no longer free _and never had been_, that has been discussed on HN elsewhere.