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I’m gradually moving my work over to Typst and it’s been a breath of fresh air. Compiles very quickly. Perhaps the hardest part has been relearning the syntax

I’m gradually moving my work over to Typst and it’s been a breath of fresh air. Compiles very quickly. Perhaps the hardest part has been relearning the syntax for math notation; Typst has some interesting opinions in this space.

nomel 1y ago
mitex is an option [1]. There's no way I could learn another notation, at this point. [1] https://typst.app/universe/package/mitex/ https://typst.app/universe/package/mitex/
- andrepd 1y ago
  I'll only say that learning typst is easier than learning LaTeX. It also has first class support for unicode (as does LaTeX via some packages) which if combined with a suitable keyboard layout makes both writing and reading math source code infinitely more pleasant :)
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
wenc 1y ago
Typst looks good, but I'm actually going back to LaTeX but paired with Claude Code in VS Code. I took a hiatus from LaTeX (got my PhD more than a decade ago). I used to know TikZ commands by heart, and I used to write sophisticated preambles (lots of \newcommand). I still remember LaTeX math notation (it's in my muscle memory, and it's used everywhere including in Markdown), but I'd forgotten all the other stuff. Claude Code, amazingly, knows all that other stuff. I just tell it what I want and it gets 95% of the way there in 1-2 shots. Not only that, it can figure out the error messages. The biggest pain in the neck with LaTeX is figuring out what went wrong. With Claude, that's not such a big issue.
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  Claude and the like are a huge problem for new languages that want to do new things. It was bad enough when a LaTeX replacement had to compete with forty-ish years of package development time. Now they also have to compete with the millions of lines of existing code LLMs have hoovered up.
  - smaudet 1y ago
    Great for code re-use but I agree, terrible for anything new.
  - coliveira 1y ago
    Which is good, because we don't want to deal with inferior solutions to typesetting that pop up every few years.
    - lblume 1y ago
      A slight bias in favor of the status quo might be acceptable or even desired. However current LLMs strongly favor traditional languages and are unable to comprehend even modern language features not part of their base training set. Consider the counterfactual of LLMs being available in the 1990s, trained mainly on the world's C code. Perhaps we would still be exclusively writing C today for new languages' code could not been synthesized as easily or conveniently. It's not just about Typst or typesetting specifically but programming language design in general and that improvements are becoming much harder to push through.
      - fc417fc802 1y ago
        > Perhaps we would still be exclusively writing C today for new languages' code could not been synthesized as easily or conveniently. I'm not actually sure that would be a bad thing? All the reasons that immediately come to mind to move away from C have to do with ergonomics and safety, the latter largely being a product of the former IMO. If an LLM can ingest my entire codebase and do 90% of the work to get me to the changes I need doesn't that obviate the majority of the motivation to change languages in the first place?
kzrdude 1y ago
One relatively optimistic prediction would be that a few will accept Typst, but latex export from Typst will gradually get more mature, until we end up with a charade where more people use other frontends like Quarto or Typst that output to latex rather than latex themselves for submission into journals - in certain fields. Somewhere after that time, Typst will break through and be generally accepted itself.
PatronBernard 1y ago
I hate a lot of things about LaTeX (also wrote several theses in it, as well as research articles), but the math syntax definitely wasn't one of them. Why on earth would they change it?
- gsinclair 1y ago
  I think anything that is chock full of backslashes and braces can surely be improved upon.
  - Maken 1y ago
    You will end up with just a different escape character.
    - cbolton 1y ago
      No it really is much lighter, see my examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354520
  - _bent 1y ago
    considering the Typst founders are German I wonder if this was one of their concerns with LaTex. Typing \ on QWERTZ is painful

nomel 1y ago

mitex is an option [1]. There's no way I could learn another notation, at this point. [1] https://typst.app/universe/package/mitex/ https://typst.app/universe/package/mitex/

andrepd 1y ago
I'll only say that learning typst is easier than learning LaTeX. It also has first class support for unicode (as does LaTeX via some packages) which if combined with a suitable keyboard layout makes both writing and reading math source code infinitely more pleasant :)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

wenc 1y ago

Typst looks good, but I'm actually going back to LaTeX but paired with Claude Code in VS Code. I took a hiatus from LaTeX (got my PhD more than a decade ago). I used to know TikZ commands by heart, and I used to write sophisticated preambles (lots of \newcommand). I still remember LaTeX math notation (it's in my muscle memory, and it's used everywhere including in Markdown), but I'd forgotten all the other stuff. Claude Code, amazingly, knows all that other stuff. I just tell it what I want and it gets 95% of the way there in 1-2 shots. Not only that, it can figure out the error messages. The biggest pain in the neck with LaTeX is figuring out what went wrong. With Claude, that's not such a big issue.

TimorousBestie 1y ago
Claude and the like are a huge problem for new languages that want to do new things. It was bad enough when a LaTeX replacement had to compete with forty-ish years of package development time. Now they also have to compete with the millions of lines of existing code LLMs have hoovered up.
- smaudet 1y ago
  Great for code re-use but I agree, terrible for anything new.
- coliveira 1y ago
  Which is good, because we don't want to deal with inferior solutions to typesetting that pop up every few years.
  - lblume 1y ago
    A slight bias in favor of the status quo might be acceptable or even desired. However current LLMs strongly favor traditional languages and are unable to comprehend even modern language features not part of their base training set. Consider the counterfactual of LLMs being available in the 1990s, trained mainly on the world's C code. Perhaps we would still be exclusively writing C today for new languages' code could not been synthesized as easily or conveniently. It's not just about Typst or typesetting specifically but programming language design in general and that improvements are becoming much harder to push through.
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      > Perhaps we would still be exclusively writing C today for new languages' code could not been synthesized as easily or conveniently. I'm not actually sure that would be a bad thing? All the reasons that immediately come to mind to move away from C have to do with ergonomics and safety, the latter largely being a product of the former IMO. If an LLM can ingest my entire codebase and do 90% of the work to get me to the changes I need doesn't that obviate the majority of the motivation to change languages in the first place?

kzrdude 1y ago

One relatively optimistic prediction would be that a few will accept Typst, but latex export from Typst will gradually get more mature, until we end up with a charade where more people use other frontends like Quarto or Typst that output to latex rather than latex themselves for submission into journals - in certain fields. Somewhere after that time, Typst will break through and be generally accepted itself.

PatronBernard 1y ago

I hate a lot of things about LaTeX (also wrote several theses in it, as well as research articles), but the math syntax definitely wasn't one of them. Why on earth would they change it?

gsinclair 1y ago
I think anything that is chock full of backslashes and braces can surely be improved upon.
- Maken 1y ago
  You will end up with just a different escape character.
  - cbolton 1y ago
    No it really is much lighter, see my examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354520
- _bent 1y ago
  considering the Typst founders are German I wonder if this was one of their concerns with LaTex. Typing \ on QWERTZ is painful