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Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement

• thrance 1y ago
  I've tried pushing Typst on my academic friends. One of them listened and eventually wrote his entire PhD thesis with it. He didn't seem to regret it.
• imiric 1y ago
  Typst is great. I'm sure it's not a complete LaTeX replacement, given the dominance of TeX for many decades, but for simple documents it's a breath of fresh air. Not having to deal with the insanity of the LaTeX distribution system alone is worth the switch. Everything is contained in a single binary. The language itself is much simpler to read and write, and seems just as flexible. LLMs do a decent job of generating it. Compilation takes less than a second, making it so much faster to iterate. Many thanks to the authors and contributors, and please don't ruin it. :)
• marginalia_nu 1y ago
  Assuming it's at all desirable, it's an interesting and recurring problem of how to dislodge existing sub-optimal (sometimes even harmful) standards and notations. Almost nobody wants to learn something new when they already know something similar. Creates a heck of a momentum effect, not just from the practitioners resisting the change, but also available resources and so on.
  • mystifyingpoi 1y ago
    See: YAML, JS, /etc structure, credit cards in US...
    • marginalia_nu 1y ago
      Keyboards being modeled after typewriters, unit of electrical charge being negative, pi being half a turn, etc. Our basis vectors are very much wide of the mark.
      • spookie 1y ago
        We... have failed so much...
  • benrutter 1y ago
    > Almost nobody wants to learn something new when they already know something similar. I think it depends on what the thing is. I use LaTeX for occasional documentation, a better version would save me a maximum of 5 minutes a year. I probably won't be an early Typst adopter. But, I spend loads of time for example, working with dataframes in Python. I got into Polars fairly early because improvements in that space can massively affect my productivity. If you're routinely using LaTeX to write papers, the time spent learning something new isn't comparably large.
    • nbernard 1y ago
      > If you're routinely using LaTeX to write papers, the time spent learning something new isn't comparably large. I don't know. By then aren't you quite comfortable with LaTeX? It may be Stockholm syndrome and sunk costs speaking, but I'm using LaTeX all the time: I quite like it and I don't feel any need for something else to replace it...
      • setr 1y ago
        Text editors progress one funeral at a time.
        • nbernard 1y ago
          Scientific text editors, you mean? ;) I suspect it is actually worse than that and that they are actually subject to the Lindy effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect ).
      • __mharrison__ 1y ago
        Folks who know latex would benefit the most from typst, just from the compiling aspect.
    • zelphirkalt 1y ago
      If a better Latex only saves you 5 minutes per year, then that means, that you are either a latex god, who types 200wpm in special characters and talks latex fluently, or, that you don't actually write much documentation per year, or, that someone else has invested significant time to create all the document layout, macros, environments, etc. so that you only need to type the text. My point is, that creating a proper latex document, specific to one's use case can consume many hours of time.
  • josephg 1y ago
    > Almost nobody wants to learn something new when they already know something similar. Yeah, I wrote a paper using typst - which was much more pleasant to draft. But for the final version submitted to the journal, we ended up converting it to latex because that's what the journal wanted. I think it'll be hard to dislodge latex for academic papers - particularly in CS. But there's plenty of other uses for it. Personally I'm looking forward to HTML output. I want to use it to write blog posts and long form documentation. (Markdown simply isn't powerful enough for my needs.)
    • cozzyd 1y ago
      Until journals and the arxiv supports it it's going to be a non starter for academic papers
  • bonoboTP 1y ago
    If the software is actually good, it can start from an enthusiastic core of students, PhD students and later niche conference organizers and niche journal editors and if they gossip about their experience, it can spread through word of mouth if it's sufficiently good.
    • marginalia_nu 1y ago
      Yeah I think this is correct, with the added caveat that it must be as good as the alternative PLUS the awkwardness of switching to have any hopes of breaking out of the local minimum. Otherwise you become Dvorak, which despite being better than Qwerty and having been around for almost a hundred years, still hasn't seen widespread adoption, in this case because the awkwardness of switching is very significant. The effect is likely smaller on something like Typst.
      • lupire 1y ago
        Dvorak is only slightly better than Qwerty at most.
  • gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
    > it's an interesting and recurring problem of how to dislodge existing sub-optimal (sometimes even harmful) standards and notations. > Almost nobody wants to learn something new when they already know something similar. There are lots of people (myself included) who genuinely like LaTeX, so it's not just inertia preventing people from switching (although that is definitely a significant factor).
  • __mharrison__ 1y ago
    I'm convinced no one really knows tex/latex. Everyone googles enough to get by. Typst on the other hand is completely sensible. It takes less time to learn typst than to refresh on latex.
• renerick 1y ago
  Typst is fantastic and I recommend to dive into it to see how much value it offers. To me personally, the biggest strength is the ergonomics of both the tooling and the language, and how ergonomics persist even between documents of various complexity. Writing a paper in LaTeX is nice, but making something like a CV takes some patience. Meanwhile, in typst it was quick to get started and go all the way to building resumes, character sheets, and I know of at least one occurrence of implementing symbolic math in typst language. It's not without quirks, but still, very solid alternative
  • chanux 1y ago
    I maintained my CV in Latex for years (originally got started on this due to the fear of MS Word) and recently tried out Typst. I agree with you that it's quite simple to get started with. Also, I had to maintain a Ubuntu based Docker image with everything needed for the build. Also if anyone is looking for a little help in getting started, LLMs are pretty decent at converting (and I forget which one I used).
    • klabetron 1y ago
      My CV is still in LaTeX which gives me the opportunity to procrastinate updating it (rather than actually applying for jobs) because of all of the tweaking I do. If nothing else, typist is going go give me more opportunities to procrastinate! Nice.
  • specproc 1y ago
    All I've done in Typst is my CV, I saw it here a while back and thought it'd be a nice use case. It took about a day to get my head round the language an another to get it looking like I wanted. It's pretty simple, but I found it easy to run up and maintain.
• WastedCucumber 1y ago
  God it's so much easier than LaTeX. I wrote so many things in LaTeX over the years, and writing (and debugging) switching to Typst felt like, well, like somebody had been fighting me every step of the way, and then finally stopped. I'm not going back, if I can help it. But I will say I've mostly written relatively simple documents in it, so maybe that colors my experience.
• mystifyingpoi 1y ago
  I just found out https://typst.app/play/ https://typst.app/play/ - this is an absolute gamechanger. Tried it for a minute, but already loving it.
  • notpushkin 1y ago
    This is basically their monetization strategy btw – the SaaS offering is exactly this app, but with cloud sync and collaboration features. This part is proprietary, sadly, but I’d say fair enough considering it pays for the compiler and other tooling (FOSS).
  • arendtio 1y ago
    It even supports vim bindings :-)
• commandersaki 1y ago
  These are some notes I wrote when I started out with typst when comparing with LaTeX: 1. It doesn't generate 5 bloody files when compiling. 2. Compiling is instant. 3. Diagnostics are way easier to understand (sort of like Rust compiler suggestion style). 4. List items can be either - item1 - item2, etc. or [item1], [item2]. The latter is way better because you can use anchoring to match on the braces (like "%" in vim), which means navigating long item entries is much easier. 5. In latex you have the \document{...} where you can't specify macros so they need to be at the top, in Typst you can specify the macros close to where you need them. 6. It's easier to version control and diff, especially if you use semantic line breaks. 7. Changing page layout, margins, spacing between things, etc., footers with page counters, etc. just seems way easier to do.
  • josephg 1y ago
    8. Programming with it is lovely. Its got a little interpreted language built in, with helper functions like json("some_file.json"). I wrote a paper in it, and used that extensively to populate all my result tables. (Benchmark script -> JSON files -> typst compiled the results directly into the PDF).
    • red_trumpet 1y ago
      Have you compared this to using lua in lualatex?
    • kzrdude 1y ago
      The fast preview makes it a fun environment for interactive graphical/visual programming. With some limitations, unfortunately no animations and don't try to create thousands of objects or curves, the language server will run out of memory and have to be restarted.
      • repeekad 1y ago
        Is what you’re describing something that latex handles well? I’m no expert, but that problem seems solvable by rendering previews with say sampling of large or complex objects vs full builds that maybe take a minute if high fidelity animations or very large graphs are desired as a supported use case in something fully open source
• fithisux 1y ago
  I used it for a presentation. Easy for the basics but it felt like a down grade from Latex or TeXmacs
  • F3nd0 1y ago
    TeXmacs is pretty great. I feel like its internals still feel a bit arcane, though. Just editing documents through the graphical interface is fine, but if you happen to use some commonplace symbols or diacritics a lot, opening the file as plain text will quickly remind you of it, with bespoke ASCII representations showing up in their place.
• defanor 1y ago
  Among alternative typesetting systems, there is also SILE, which supports two syntaxes (XML-based and TeX-style), supports scripting in lua, comes with freely available sort-of-specification (unlike (La)TeX or Typst, unless one counts program sources as specification). For formulae, it additionally allows direct MathML input. I have not used either Typst or SILE though, only looked into their documentation. HTML with MathML may make a decent system as well; possibly with an XML source and XSLT for templating, which is apparently how OpenStax textbooks are composed (via CNXML, though that also has just a couple of rain frog pictures in its documentation repository -- seems to be a common pattern around typesetting systems). Then there is troff with eqn(1), which looks simpler, but not sure if there is an actual specification for it around, either. And then there are Texinfo, org-mode with LaTeX embedding, other TeX-adjacent options, perhaps Markdown with HTML and MathML embedding.
  • gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
    > HTML with MathML may make a decent system as well HTML is fine to write by hand (especially when you take advantage of tag omission [0]), but I can't imagine handwriting MathML, since even simple equations need lots of tags [1]. [0]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#syntax-tag-omission https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#syntax-ta... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML#Presentation_and_semantics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML#Presentation_and_semant...
    • defanor 1y ago
      It is indeed considerably more verbose, especially the "context" version (the one focusing on semantics, rather than presentation), and I did not write much of it myself, but I can imagine it being fine. It should not be a bottleneck for carefully (and slowly) composed documents, while for more casual and quick notes, even with LaTeX it appears to be common to use both a preview (often inline) and some input assistance, avoiding completely manual handwriting. Besides, as the linked Wikipedia article mentions, it is rather like expressions in Lisp-family programming languages (or pretty much any common ones, if you avoid infix operators), which are not that bad. I imagine it may also be more convenient (and terse) in combination with SXML or KDL, to avoid closing tags.
• amoshebb 1y ago
  Tinymist plugin in vscode is all you need to install, no giant amorphous TexLive thing needed for local editing.
• mcny 1y ago
  Since there are typist folks here, how do you work with hash and dollar signs? If I want to write C# on my resume, I do C`#` but there has to be a better way?
  • tcfhgj 1y ago
    C\#
  • ithkuil 1y ago
    I'm not a typst user but from a quick look at the language you should be able to type C\# You can also write a macro #let csharp = [C\#] And then use it as #csharp
    • TRiG_Ireland 1y ago
      Or even `#show "csharp": [C\#]` and then just write `csharp`. Though then you couldn't include the actual text "csharp" in your document, should you wish to, so perhaps defining the variable is a better option.
    • mcny 1y ago
      Thank you! I don't know how or why this works but on my computer, turns out I can skip the square brackets which I tried out after seeing your answer. #let csharp = "C#" for some reason this works and does not throw an error. so now I can use it like == Technical Skills - *Languages:* #csharp, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, SQL, Ruby, Java, Kotlin, Rust, Go, PHP
• qmmmur 1y ago
  I've changed all my teaching materials to Typst. It is such a breath of fresh air.
• oldie17 1y ago
  Typst is just wonderful, I hear maths majors now procrastinate on thesis writing by writing typst packages instead. Give it ten years and see how it developed. Pros: - Instant compile. It just sits there waiting, and once you save your .typ, boom, your .pdf is ready. - Surprisingly often I find myself using it as markdown replacement, e.g., for random meeting notes. Syntax is as easy as markdown and without boilerplate it produces a nice pdf. What's not to like? - IMO debugging can be tricky with quite concise error messages. And it does not produce any pdf once there is a single syntax error, precluding one favourite latex debugging route. - When using packages, one does encounter hickups, but no surprise here for long-time latex users.
  • throwaway_7274 1y ago
    In my experience, the hiccups with packages are of a different kind than those with LaTeX packages. They’re more often “normal programming” hiccups where a function is poorly-documented, or there’s simply a bug. LaTeX packages can cause bigger problems: even usepackage-ing them can do arbitrary ‘stuff’ and have weird nonlocal effects that are basically undebuggable. Oftentimes two packages will just be incompatible, which should not ever be the case in a sensible programming language.
• delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
  I must say I really like the more straightforward syntax, semantics, and distribution model of Typst. LaTeX is akin to programming with the C preprocessor, it's both ridiculous and amazing what people have done with it but it gets quickly intractable. However, I really do enjoy the quality of graphics, diagrammatic, and scientific output from LaTeX, even if typing them is a pain (LLMs are a huge help here). So asking the community here: what does Typst offer in place of PGF/TikZ[1], PGFPlots[2], Asymptote[3], chemfig[4], siunitx[5], physics2[6], and how does it work with existing bibliography providers? I use biber[7] with the Zotero Connector and Better BibTeX[8] so any paper I visit on the web is essentially instantly available to cite with one click on LaTeX. A good test for Typst ought to be reproducing most of these typographic and diagrammatic exemplars: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/ https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/ [1]: https://tikz.dev/ https://tikz.dev/ [2]: https://tikz.dev/pgfplots/ https://tikz.dev/pgfplots/ [3]: https://asymptote.sourceforge.io/ https://asymptote.sourceforge.io/ [4]: https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/generic/chemfig/chemfig-en.pdf https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/generic/chemfig/chemfig-en.p... [5]: https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/siunitx/siunitx.pdf https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/siunitx/siunit... [6]: https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/physics2/physics2.pdf https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/physics2/physi... [7]: https://mirrors.ctan.org/biblio/biber/base/documentation/biber.pdf https://mirrors.ctan.org/biblio/biber/base/documentation/bib... [8]: https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/
  • ioasuncvinvaer 1y ago
    Cetz[0] is the drawing library in typst. For your other needs check out the package repository at [1] (visualization should be the correct category). Typst has a bibtex support by default [2]. [0] https://typst.app/universe/package/cetz https://typst.app/universe/package/cetz [1] https://typst.app/universe/search/?kind=packages&category=visualization https://typst.app/universe/search/?kind=packages&category=vi... [2] https://typst.app/docs/reference/model/bibliography/ https://typst.app/docs/reference/model/bibliography/
  • constantcrying 1y ago
    Obviously the drawing capabilities aren't equivalent yet. bibtex files can be used in typst.
• euroderf 1y ago
  Typst could be great for SSG blogging, but there doesn't seem to be much going on in that space.
• HiPhish 1y ago
  I have written a couple of lecture notes in LaTeX and I wrote my master's thesis (mathematics) in LaTeX as well[1]. It's actually a fine language if all you want to do is write and rely on other people's templates. But actually writing my own package or understand how the underlying systems work has always seemed like black magic where individual packages have to avoid stepping on each other's toes, or add specific workarounds. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I got. It would be nice if Typst could be a LaTeX replacement that makes actually layout and designing the document approachable. I have only used it once for a quick one-off experiment and I did like the language, but as I have said above the language is not the problem if you just want to write text. [1] That's not quite true, actually. I first wrote my thesis in reStructuredText and used Pandoc to generate the LaTeX and subsequent PDF. This allowed me to get started without having to write a lengthy preamble first. Then after I had more than half of it written down and had a good idea of what I wanted the document to look like did I clean up the generated LaTeX, adjust the formatting to my needs, redid the drawing in TikZ, and then kept writing LaTeX from there. I still think the language is not the problem, but it's easy to get hung up in the design phase before even the first chapter is written.
  • Gualdrapo 1y ago
    > It would be nice if Typst could be a LaTeX replacement that makes actually layout and designing the document approachable Those goals fall way out of the scope of LaTeX (and of course of Typst). If you want to have more control and power into a document's design, there's ConTeXt - as a graphic designer I just love it and can't imagine myself replacing it with LaTeX or Typst. But as you said, if you want to concentrate on writing your text without thinking too much about its design, LaTeX or Typst are great for that.
    • the-wumpus 1y ago
      I disagree with it being outside the scope of typst. Typst makes designing a template entirely feasible, I've tried and succeeded.
    • HiPhish 1y ago
      I have hear of ConTeXt, but never tried it. I originally wanted to write my resume in LaTeX, but I quickly realized that my choice was either to use a template and have a resume that looks like everyone else's, or dig deeply into the arcane working of TeX. In the end I had my sister do it in InDesign, but now she is the only one who can update it. I would love to remake it in something I can actually edit myself, whether ConTeXt, Typst or Sile.
• aborsy 1y ago
  Tex doesn’t attract software developers. The programming language has remained really old fashioned and clunky. The error system is particularly bad. I use it on a daily basis, and it doesn’t feel nice, far from the experience with Python or Rust. The output is superb though, which is why everyone in academia keep using it. It’s just the tooling that is poor. I think it needs to be modernized.
  • kzrdude 1y ago
    TeX has the idea that it's feature complete and should not develop, so then by definition (cheekily) it cannot attract any developers.
  • zzless 1y ago
    With all due respect to your perspective on TeX, isn't it the whole point? There are weaknesses in TeX (like using $ for both beginning and ending the math mode) but they are quite minor. Quirkiness is not a weakness but being a standard (since 1986!) is a major strength. The fact that it does not change is a blessing, truly. Python may be a fine language with a great community of supporters and I use it because I pretty much must but programming in something that is essentially a moving target is no fun. And I would take TeX macros over Python ugly syntax any day, no offense. Not to say I am right just to point out that taste is not necessarily a reliable guide.
  • MeltedVoltage 1y ago
    The modernized version is Typst though.. it's closing the gap to (La)TeX really fast
• sieve 1y ago
  I have been planning to put out a quarterly Sanskrit newsletter for some time now, and was dreading having to deal with LaTeX. For basic stuff, LibreOffice PDF export works. But that is not a plain text workflow. I then discovered typst and it is a breath of fresh air. Unicode/Dēvanāgarī support out-of-the-box, no installing gigabytes of packages, near-instant compilation. My complements to those who got this done.
  • malshe 1y ago
    Where can we sign up for the newsletter?
    • sieve 1y ago
      I will post it on our website as well as reddit when it is ready. I am taking my time to ensure that it does not become a one-off thing and can continue for many quarters. - https://www.adhyeta.org.in/ https://www.adhyeta.org.in/ - https://old.reddit.com/r/adhyeta/ https://old.reddit.com/r/adhyeta/
• bawolff 1y ago
  Fun fact: TeX was written closer in time to Alan Turing's famous paper introducing the Turing machine, than to present day. The absolute staying power of TeX has been incredible.
• wolfgangbabad 1y ago
  Another unpronounceable project name. Well done.
  • tcfhgj 1y ago
    Straight forward if you ask me: > /taɪpst/. "Ty" like in Typesetting and "pst" like in Hipster. https://github.com/typst/typst?tab=readme-ov-file#pronunciation-and-spelling https://github.com/typst/typst?tab=readme-ov-file#pronunciat...
    • notpushkin 1y ago
      Huh, I was reading it as “typist” all this time (and will probably continue).
      • flokl 1y ago
        I noticed quite a few people must do that because I have heard that pronunciation a few times already IRL and in videos. Some people also write it that way, a search here in the comments results in 4 matches.
    • andrewshadura 1y ago
      I keep reading it as tüpst.
  • bartvk 1y ago
    I agree but I'm thankful that it's a very searchable but still related name at least.
• northlondoner 1y ago
  Typst is a markdown plug-in. It is a productivity tool. It lacks the standalone nature of LaTeX as a language and proper extensibility.
  • MatejKafka 1y ago
    Huh? Other than borowing some of the syntax, Typst is completely unrelated to markdown.
    • northlondoner 1y ago
      Yes, I meant, markdown syntax. Don't get me wrong, it is a nice project. I like how they adopt Rust.
    • northlondoner 1y ago
      I had a feeling that it is similar to R markdown https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com R markdown is similar in capacity one can mix R language, but since syntax is Markdown they kept the name.
  • constantcrying 1y ago
    How does a project with a built in package manger and a wide variety of packages lack "proper" extensibility?
    • northlondoner 1y ago
      Proper as in widely adopted as https://ctan.org https://ctan.org. Yes, great to have package manager. Typest is a very young project and company.
    • northlondoner 1y ago
      Smaller community compared to LaTeX may lead to perceptions of lacking "proper" extensibility. For users needing niche or low-level typesetting capabilities, LaTeX’s mature and highly flexible system may still feel superior. Build-in package manager does not necessarily 100% guarantee full extensibility as in crazy Latex macros ;-) As I said, it is a young project and young company, it will grow in time.
• jakegmaths 1y ago
  Almost all my computer science students are using Typst on my recommendation to write up their programming projects, vs most using Microsoft Word last year. Specifically, writing in VSCode with the Tinymist Typist extension. All going very well so far and no complaints.
  • zelphirkalt 1y ago
    I was with you when you explained how you got them off of MS Word (even worse if it was the web version!!), until you brought up VSCode. I get it, you are probably advocating very practical choices. Just that I wouldn't recommend students to become dependent on VSCode (due to its vendor and "telemetry"). Basically, that makes the students again dependent on MS. But I guess since you recommend an extension, you cannot recommend VSCodium and adding the extension store as someone in a teaching position? If you can, then I would strongly advocate recommending VSCodium instead (or non-electron app editors), to avoid spyware on their machines and to promote a healthier tooling.
    • HiPhish 1y ago
      There is a language server for Typst: https://github.com/Myriad-Dreamin/tinymist https://github.com/Myriad-Dreamin/tinymist I have not tried this one, but the predecessor (typst-lsp) was working fine with Neovim for me when I did my little Typst experiment last year. Whatever the VSCode plugin is offering should be possible to replicate on top of tinymist.
      • kzrdude 1y ago
        Tinymist is working very well with Neovim too - and there is a preview plugin based off of tinymist, too, for Neovim.
  • chanux 1y ago
    Surprised you had to. I found Latex all by myself back then. I have never seen the reason so well visualized than this short video https://www.youtube.com/shorts/26BDVgIXkTo https://www.youtube.com/shorts/26BDVgIXkTo Jokes aside, I'm sure your students are very thankful to you for introducing a better system.
• 3036e4 1y ago
  I guess if Pandoc adds Typst output support I will consider using that, but "LaTeX replacement" sounds like something that is too low level to consider for most usecases? It was many years since I used LaTeX for anything other than at most short snippets embedded in other documents (e.g. md or org). Or would Typst replace something like Pandoc Markdown (with a long list of supported output formats and a convenient Lua filter API)? * Submitted too fast. A quick search tells me Pandoc already added Typst input and output support (e.g. https://pandoc.org/typst-property-output.html https://pandoc.org/typst-property-output.html), so guess I need to look into if I should switch to use that for generating PDFs.
  • noelwelsh 1y ago
    Depends what you want to do, but Typst has replaced Pandoc for the book [1] I'm writing. [1]: https://github.com/scalawithcats/scala-with-cats/tree/feature/typst https://github.com/scalawithcats/scala-with-cats/tree/featur...
  • cbolton 1y ago
    I moved from Pandoc+Lua filters to Typst. Having the scripting language integrated is just nicer, though I sometimes miss the separation between data (from Pandoc markdown) and code.
    • 3036e4 1y ago
      Is it as good for generating EPUB or HTML for instance? Or just plain text?
      • cbolton 1y ago
        I use it to generate PDF. The last release introduced experimental HTML output which is promising but still immature. Work on EPUB support hasn't started as far as I know but it's on the roadmap, and I guess it will be relatively easy once the ongoing work on HTML and accessibility is done.
        • 1y ago
• noelwelsh 1y ago
  I've ditched Pandoc + Latex for Typst for a book [1] that I'm writing. Typst is as easy to write a Markdown, and so much easier to program than Latex (though it is still a bit rough in some places). In Latex I would have to rely on a slew of packages to get anything done, and then work around their quirky interactions. With Typst it's feasible to just write it myself. It's also really fast and doesn't poo all over the file system. Strong recommend if you're producing technical documentation with PDF as your primary target. [1]: https://github.com/scalawithcats/scala-with-cats/tree/feature/typst https://github.com/scalawithcats/scala-with-cats/tree/featur...
  • nibman 1y ago
    [dead]
• donperignon 1y ago
  No criticism, but just reading the title my brain said, rust, and… voila! Apart from that, neat project.
• enricozb 1y ago
  Typst is great for web content as well (even though their HTML export functionality is still experimental). I've written blog posts on interaction nets in Typst [0] and I really like how the diagrams look. [0]: https://ezb.io/thoughts/interaction_nets/lambda_calculus/2025-05-18_lazy-strict-eval.html https://ezb.io/thoughts/interaction_nets/lambda_calculus/202...
  • erk__ 1y ago
    I rewrote my website to use typst for all the content and I really like how it is to integrate as well, its just a rust crate that I use in my build script because Typst is just on crates.io https://erk.dev/2025/04/19/bureaucracy https://erk.dev/2025/04/19/bureaucracy
• robert-zaremba 1y ago
  TBH, I'm sick about LaTeX: - compilation is heavy - it's not friendly for writing (far from the dominant markup languages) - poor support to HTML / Epub / mobile outputs - output (PDF) not friendly for parsing / digesting. - tonnes of templates, lot of mess. We should just use human friendly markups like MyST Markdown [1] or Org Mode [2]. Unfortunately, whitepapers are predominantly written in LaTeX. Thankfully, arXiv recently made a move to parse and render those documents in the web format. It's a hard job. But this is the wrong way around: instead of keep composing documents in LaTeX (which is not human friendly), and then doing the hard job with tooling, we should start with human first approach and have win-win! We are living in the world where web content is the primary content and friendly for desktop, mobile devices and readers and tools (select, copy, edit...). It's easy to package any web content into epub and ship it in a single file. Printing is also easy. Only cons: precise typesetting is not harder. But this is less of the problem. I would prefer a content that is friendly to read and is responsive, than a precise typesetting. [1] https://mystmd.org/ https://mystmd.org/ [2] https://orgmode.org/manual/Summary.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Summary.html [3] https://info.arxiv.org/about/accessible_HTML.html https://info.arxiv.org/about/accessible_HTML.html
  • lupire 1y ago
    MyST seems nice but it appears to be not a replacement for LaTeX, but is a way to embed LaTeX in non-LaTeX content
  • constantcrying 1y ago
    Typst wants to target both PDF and HTML, making it trivial to have a PDF document and a HTML page with identical content. That way you get the best out of both worlds.
    • Syzygies 1y ago
      Wants to, but still experimental: https://typst.app/docs/reference/html/ https://typst.app/docs/reference/html/
  • anta40 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure LaTeX can do all the documents I want to, e.g anything with complicated math expressions, various pseudocodes, computer science-y diagrams like karnaugh map, algorithm flowchart etc etc. Of course, it's not all roses and sunshines, though. Depending on your usecases, usually need to import a few packages and sometimes they don't work out of the box easily. For real life work I don't need that much power, though. But after learning various alternatives like markdown, asciidoctor etc etc eventually I go back to LaTeX. Oh well :p
• khalic 1y ago
  I just gotta ask: what’s this trend of tech blogs to appear like 90s html? No typographical rules whatsoever, basic colours with outrageous contrasts. Does it make the blogs look more edgy and geeky? Is it a an artistic trend in web design? I’d love some insights from someone with a better sense of the situation
  • tcfhgj 1y ago
    according to Wikipedia, the blog was launched January 29, 1998
  • topaz0 1y ago
    LWN is one of the most important journalistic outfits of the open source software world, not just some guy's blog. As the other commenter noted, it also dates to the '90s.
• nyc1983 1y ago
  Nobody seems to be taking about how great typst is to use programmatically. It’s absolutely trivial for example to build a Lambda function that parses some json input into a PDF. We’re using it to generate PDF invoices for our customers. We save massive amounts of compute because of how fast typst compiles into the PDF.
• kolibril13 1y ago
  if you want create animations with typst, I've written a blender extension for rendering typst content: https://github.com/kolibril13/blender_typst_importer https://github.com/kolibril13/blender_typst_importer
• einpoklum 1y ago
  Typst seems to be the product of a commercial company - fully controlled by it. That's not appropriate as a foundation for document authoring by "the public". I am also worried about the rust-centricity, seeing how rust is somewhat of a moving target.
  • suddenlybananas 1y ago
    What do you mean the rust-centricity?
    • tialaramex 1y ago
      Some people have this weird idea that because Rust ships new versions very often (every six weeks, like a web browser) this means it's unstable. They see rust 1.90 and they're like "Oh no, that's dozens of incompatible versions" rather than "Wow, over ten years of commitment to compatibility".
  • Mikhail_K 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • eigenspace 1y ago
      Can you clarify what you mean when you say it can be taken closed-source at any moment? Do you mean that future iterations of the software could be closed source? As far as I understand, they can't just revoke the existing open source license for the existing already distributed software, and if they did decide to move forward from here with closed source distribution, the community would be free to just fork the existing codebase and continue working on it.
    • throawayonthe 1y ago
      how? as a copyright holder you can at any time relicense code as proprietary of course, but that neither revokes the existing licensed code, nor is at all unique to the apache license?
• nibman 1y ago
  [dead]
• mr-karan 1y ago
  It's great to see Typst getting more visibility. We migrated a real-world workload to it a couple of years back: generating and e-mailing 1.5M+ PDFs daily at my org, Zerodha. Our previous pipeline was LaTeX-based (first pdflatex, then lualatex), but we were constantly fighting cryptic memory errors on large documents and huge Docker image sizes that slowed down boot times of our ephemeral workers. Switching to Typst was a massive win for us. The single static binary resulted in tiny images and faster boot times. More importantly, the performance gains were huge. Overall compile times were ~3–4× faster than LaTeX. On really large documents (2000+ pages, mostly tables), Typst compiles in ~1 minute vs. ~18 minutes with lualatex. Beyond performance, the better developer experience and good error messages was a nice bonus too. We wrote a detailed post about the entire architecture - from the job orchestration with Nomad to the S3 optimizations and the Typst migration in particular. If you're curious, you can read it here: https://zerodha.tech/blog/1-5-million-pdfs-in-25-minutes https://zerodha.tech/blog/1-5-million-pdfs-in-25-minutes
  • lupire 1y ago
    For your use case, why were you using LaTeX in the first place? That is more surprising than finding a replacement for LaTeX.
    • xigoi 1y ago
      What else would you use to generate PDFs from a text-based template?
      • jayknight 1y ago
        20-ish years ago I wrote a system to do that with xslt. Would not recommend.
      • sixtyj 1y ago
        E.g. Pandoc, universal tool…
        • xigoi 1y ago
• kumarvvr 1y ago
  It has a paid version, which frightens me that future greatness of the software and eco-system may be over-shadowed by greed and control. Only paid version has "private packages".
  • tcfhgj 1y ago
    *paid version of an editor
  • pydry 1y ago
    The lack of this would frighten me that it would be neglected.
  • TRiG_Ireland 1y ago
    The free online version doesn't have private packages. You are, of course, free to run the compiler locally with as many private packages as your heart desires.
• bluenose69 1y ago
  I've started using typst for small local documents that I would previously have written in markdown (or R-markdown). Typst offers programming features that are very helpful for small writing tasks that need more customization than markdown provides but that don't need the wildly expansive set of templates available in the latex world. Like other academics, I plan to stick with latex for journal articles and books, unless publishers provide support for typst. Markdown still has a place for files on github, because that means that web browsers will display formatted material, not just the raw code. A similar thing applies to code documentation, with many systems (R, Julia, etc) supporting various flavours of markdown. I recommend typst to students for small tasks like assignments. It offers more typesetting power than markdown, it's a great replacement for msword, and it's easier to learn than latex. Long story short, typst fills a niche. But it's not the be-all and end-all, at least in my (natural science) field.
  • bjackman 1y ago
    > Like other academics, I plan to stick with latex for journal articles and books, unless publishers provide support for typst. In my undergrad we sent all our essays etc as LaTeX and it was honestly very usable. I assume this was somewhat dependent on having a wealth of enthusiast professors and postgrads to develop the templates though...? Since then, I've used LaTeX in a "freeform" way and absolutely hated it, I will definitely be trying Typst next time I need more than Markdown/RST. But I can imagine that if you are unlucky, working with the journal-provided templates could be WORSE - if the templates suck you are surely in a world of pain!
    • bombcar 1y ago
      LaTeX absolutely shines when you have someone providing a template; hardly anything comes close. When you're on your own, you need to either steal someone else's and modify it, learn to build your own, or just use something like the Memoir package (which is the first but designed for it.) Even if you don't use LaTeX at all, "A Few Notes on Book Design" is worth the read: https://ctan.org/pkg/memdesign https://ctan.org/pkg/memdesign
• fhcbix 1y ago
  For me Tectonic[1] solved many of the issues I had with LaTeX, so that's what I'd recommend if you still depend on LaTeX as a language. Make sure to use the V2 CLI (`tectonic -X`) which comes with convenient features like watch mode. With vim and evince (or any PDF viewer that auto refreshes) open I get a similar real-time experience to popular online editors like Overleaf, but in the comfort of my own editor. [1] https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/ https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/
• TRiG_Ireland 1y ago
  I've been using Typst to create some good-looking agendas for my Toastmasters club. [1] I've found it a lot of fun, and have received a fair few compliments. [1]: https://typst.app/project/rmyyeU17y51rl6ISSqGji9 https://typst.app/project/rmyyeU17y51rl6ISSqGji9
• throawayonthe 1y ago
  Writing a 3d renderer in Typst because https://youtu.be/ocsR-o7auak https://youtu.be/ocsR-o7auak
• robin_reala 1y ago
  I’ve used neither Latex or Typst, but how are they at producing accessible PDFs?
  • nicce 1y ago
    They aren’t fully compatible yet but there is a lot of work going on now because of the new EU legistlation. LaTeX is closer. E.g https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/133 https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/133 https://www.latex-project.org/news/2024/03/27/PDFUA2-examples/ https://www.latex-project.org/news/2024/03/27/PDFUA2-example... https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/ https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/
  • flokl 1y ago
    Typst will support PDF/UA-1 with the upcoming version 0.14. Pull with the current progress: https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6619 https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6619
  • reknih 1y ago
    We're pretty close, actually. The PRs for accessible PDFs [^1] and their associated documentation [^2] are landing next week. [^1]: https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6619 https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6619 [^2]: https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6905 https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6905
• cyp0633 1y ago
  I loved typesetting my bachelor thesis with Typst (but with LaTeX math formula), and now it's even more promising after being able to embed PDF figures this July (see issue #145).
• constantcrying 1y ago
  Typst fixes pretty much every problem LaTeX has. It replaces the macro language of LaTeX with a python/rust like language, which couldn't be easier to write. The markup language has a markdown like syntax which makes writing simple things simple. And allows for complex, but easy to comprehend operations when useful. It has good tooling, with helpful error messages and is not arbitrarily limited on memory or font support. (I know some LaTeX engines do not have that problem anymore, but even the Idea of competing engines with different feature sets is somewhat ridiculous) I have used it a lot, for many different things.
• raybb 1y ago
  I also recently published a book written with Typst. It was absolutely a joy to work with, especially because the book was a collection of student essays. I converted them from docx to Typst and then getting all the figures and tables setup nicely and uniformly was easy. The PDF generation was perfect but converting to docx/epub I ran into a few bugs in pandoc. I reported them and a few were fixed and a few are still open. Overall, a very positive experience. Book: https://thelabofthought.co/shop/p/nbmi3 https://thelabofthought.co/shop/p/nbmi3 Bugs: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aclosed%20author%3ARayBB https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3A...
• Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  As a long time latex user, and one who is occasionally frustrated by usual things about latex, I have two qualms about attempting to switch to a new system. The first is I already have found solutions to many of my edge cases in latex. Will I have to do this all over again in something like Typst? It can't be so good as to not have any. And when I do encounter them, is the user base big enough to have already encountered it and solved it and wrote about it, so I can just look it up? Looking at the example in the link, in principle it looks great. But one of the strengths of latex is that I can customize things. Like for the list example, I can have fine tune control over the indent on both sides, the list marker symbol, the space between the marker and the text, and so on and so on. Does typst have this level of control?
  • vessenes 1y ago
    Same boat here. It’s a very good layout language. And vastly superior production process. Will you find new edge cases? Yes. Is there a large user base covering all problems? No. You can add: “Does Claude Code understand it well enough?” No as of a year ago, last time I checked.
    • throwaway_7274 1y ago
      Yesterday I had Claude write me a simple 3d renderer using the CetZ package (typst’s Tikz) to draw illustrations of surfaces for a math paper. It pretty much nailed it.
    • __mharrison__ 1y ago
      I've had decent results from AI for typst.
    • pbronez 1y ago
      AI support is an interesting new facet of ecosystem quality. I wonder how much of this can be obviated with high quality tools. Coding agents can leverage language servers and documentation fairly well, but it’s not clear to me if that can fully compensate for weak language coverage in the training data.
  • 1y ago
• agnishom 1y ago
  The experience of editing Typst on VSCode (with appropriate plugins) is great. The text is updated real time, and there is no full-page refresh
• jbaber 1y ago
  It's my duty bring up that plain TeX, the Knuth language in which the large macro collection LaTeX is written, isn't as verbose and opaque as LaTeX when people complain about that. It has the opposite problem where you may have more control than you'd like. But it is in some sense very simple. e.g. this is a valid plain TeX document: $$\aleph_0$$ \bye Things don't have to begin{ and end{ etc. There are simple collections of useful macros like [extended plain] kind of like lodash where the aim is to enhance the classic syntax by ` input eplain` at the top, not take over. NB: I was so proud to write my thesis entirely in [extended plain], but when it was time to submit it to the library they basically said, "That's nice, nerd, but we have specific style files." and I had to rewrite it into LaTeX anyway! [extended plain]: https://tug.org/eplain/ https://tug.org/eplain/
  • bombcar 1y ago
    Anyone who has only ever used LaTeX will be pleasantly surprised by plain TeX - so many of the things that you'd think must be LaTeX macros are actually just TeX itself.
    • globular-toast 1y ago
      Knuth's The TeXbook is also a delightful read. You'll learn a lot about typography.
      • nickm12 1y ago
        I read the TeXBook over 25 years ago when I wanted to learn about how mathematics was typeset. It gave me a lifelong appreciation for and love of the art of typography. The downside is that once you know, you know and you will see lots of bad typography. Though I genuinely think digital typography has continually and gradually improved over the decades. The typography you get "out of the box" is much better than 20 years ago. Also, high dpi displays rock!
• impendia 1y ago
  One advantage of LaTeX is that it's virtually impossible to generate markup by accident. This contrasts with other platforms which often decide that I'm trying to create a bulleted list, write something in boldface, etc. -- which hasn't always been the case. It seems that part of the design philosophy of Typst is to make more assumptions about what the user is trying to do. For example, apparently if the user wants "dif" to appear in a math formula, typing "dif" would instead produce a differential -- although I presume there is some easy way to handle this. Anyone who has used Typst -- did this potential disadvantage materialize in any way which was at all significant? Or did it turn out to be a nonissue?
  • tcfhgj 1y ago
    Text needs quotes in math mode, only single letters are rendered as text. Markup is indicated by []. Math by $$ Code by # Accidentally entering markup mode hasn't happened to me so far.
  • airstrike 1y ago
    This is a nonissue. I've written several lengthy documents mixing up all sorts of pieces in Typst over a year, created my own template, modules, functions...
  • SavioMak 1y ago
    nonissue for me. This is an advantage in most cases, and the way to tell typst to just render literally is quite obvious (backslash in markup mode, quoting text in math mode). The only slightly annoying thing is that in math mode "/" becomes a binary operator for rendering like \frac, and you need to use the ugly and hard to read "\/" for an actual forward slash for tighter division.
• moltar 1y ago
  I love Typst and have standardized all our company docs on that. Much easier to render neat looking docs. And coding agents are quite capable at making edits.
• amai 1y ago
  If Typst would also allow to create HTML it could become a successor of LaTeX. Without it it is just another kind of LaTeX, created for printing stuff on paper. But that is not what a digital future needs.
  • echoangle 1y ago
    Theres experimental support for HTML export: https://typst.app/docs/reference/html/ https://typst.app/docs/reference/html/
    • commandersaki 1y ago
      I tried this out about 6 or so months ago; it was pretty bad unfortunately. I was willing to put my money where my mouth is and pay a bit to dedicate resources for it like a bounty, but typst organisation doesn't seem to have something like that. I have actually donated to the project AND paid for a subscription to their web service though.
• colelyman 1y ago
  I love Typst! Currently rewriting my CV in Typst and it has been an excellent experience. One small hindrance is the inability to have multiple bibliographies. In the past I have also used it to generates quotes (in terms of finances, invoice etc.). It was neat because all of the logic for adding up the subtotal was written in the language (and was fairly easy to understand). I can imagine trying to do that logic in LaTeX…
• qbit42 1y ago
  Typst seems like an improvement in many respects, but I definitely prefer LaTeX when working with detailed math equations (most of my use of LaTeX). I think there is a lot of inertia for anything to replace LaTeX for mathematical research.
• nxpnsv 1y ago
  [deleted]
  • Ar-Curunir 1y ago
    Typst is entirely open-source as well. Only the online overleaf-like system is proprietary. > Compilation is faster, but so much more time is spent writing than typesetting. Continuing in your vein of writing dismissive comments, the moment you actually start caring about how things look in your documents (you know, the reason why people use LaTeX), typesetting starts taking up a non-trivial amount of time. Not in the act of setting up the typesetting, but actually debugging it.
    • nxpnsv 1y ago
      I do care how my things look, I've written books, papers, reports, CVs, slides and posters (the last two was admittedly painful). I think I reacted to a very dismissive tone towards LaTeX from typst fanboys who cannot imagine why someone would still use LaTeX, but thinking about it - I don't like the tone of my message either so I'll delete it.
• throwaway_7274 1y ago
  It's night and day. I'm a PhD student currently writing my thesis in Typst. On paper this is an absurdly risky decision: it's a new technology without a huge user-base, it's not totally stable yet, etc. But I tried Typst and I had no choice. It was obviously the right thing to do, even though I'm going to have to make a pixel-perfect clone of my university's LaTeX template. I've been using LaTeX for over ten years and I still wouldn't say that I "know" TeX in any meaningful way. I was not only productive but proficient in Typst in a day or two. If there isn't a package for something that I need (and, surprisingly often, there are packages for what I need, and excellent ones!), I find that I can just do it myself. Quickly. Things that never would have been possible for me with LaTeX are within easy reach. In ways I'd be happy to talk about if anyone's curious, it's been a huge enabler of my productivity as a researcher. I owe this tool so much. Interestingly, I spend far, far less time yak-shaving in Typst than in TeX, since I can just Do The Thing That I Want. I'm actually focusing on writing instead of figuring out why package A conflicts with package B, and then how to install a different version of just a single package to override one of them, and then... [this sort of thing doesn't/can't happen in Typst; it's a real programming language with real modules] I could go on and on about the (relative) quality of the ergonomics and devex: fast compilation times, as others have said, but so much more than that. Try it out. Just try it out. I should also say that it's not perfect. There are some funky design decisions for sure. There are some missing features, like including pdfs as images in your document (that one's on its way, I believe). Critically, the quality of the typesetting is maybe... 95% as good as TeX, which is perfect every time. Sometimes things don't kern quite right, and you have to adjust them by hand. It's a work in progress. I'm optimistic that it will achieve parity on that front.
  • Rochus 1y ago
    > I've been using LaTeX for over ten years and I still wouldn't say that I "know" TeX in any meaningful way. I was not only productive but proficient in Typst in a day or two. That's an interesting insight. Do you have an idea why this is? Do you have a CS background?
    • throwaway_7274 1y ago
      Yep, I'm a CS researcher in a top-3 department. (Hate to be all credentialist like that, but I'm guessing it does mean something to this audience.) I think a lot of the reason is that, ok, LaTeX is extremely complicated. We all know this. Its partisans tend to believe that this is because typesetting is a hard problem. Typesetting is a hard problem! We know this, too. But I think that a substantial fraction of the complexity of LaTeX is accidental complexity stemming, ultimately, from the inherently loosey-goosey nature of the system. See, there is no real abstraction in TeX. There are no real mechanisms for encapsulation/information hiding/whatever. It's all just characters that eat characters and turn into other characters. Anything can do anything. Anything can be anything. As a result, the whole "theory" of what a TeX program "is" (like in the sense that Peter Naur used that word?) is conventional. This means that even to reuse other people's code, you have to imbibe decades of convention that's maybe semi-documented, maybe folkloric, or maybe perfectly sound but requires you to read a 230-page manual. I can only speak for myself, but for me, it's no way to live. Now, again, TeX-lovers tend to claim that its high degree of loosey-gooseyness is necessary, that it's what makes TeX "powerful." I don't know, that sounds to me like the same old "you can't handle writing assembly" story. Sure I can. I'd just rather not if I can help it. Maybe it's the PL person in me.
• flexagoon 1y ago
  I love typst. Literally no reason to use LaTeX in 2025 unless you really need some specific package or you need to submit raw TeX code somewhere
• jszymborski 1y ago
  I'll need to give this another go sometime. I gave writing my thesis in Typst a go, but ended up using LaTeX/XeTeX because I couldn't figure out how to customize the existing templates to my liking.
• ThinkBeat 1y ago
  Whenever someone creates a "better and lightweight" successor to latex they will over time be asked to, or by themselves need to add another small feature to extend its capabilities will over time move closer and closer to the LaTex features set. Or someone will use it and create a large document and find that Typst just does not have enough features they need, they will get frustrated and feel the need to move over to Latex. Just like the original markup definition was fine, but then we have a forrest over forks or similar projects that add specific features someone needed. That said if your needs are covered by Typst it's certainly easier to learn.
  • tcfhgj 1y ago
    Are you implying latex is a global optimum?
    • ThinkBeat 1y ago
      I would say that it is the most complete typesetting system out there that I know about¹ It is not the optimal system that could possibly be created. for many reasons. However as people design new typesetting systems or various kinds, and they make it the priority for it to be simple. Then usually over time users become restless because the markup langauge misses a typesetting feature they would like. And we wee a plethora of markup forks of all sorts that include one set of typesetting additional features that the authors deemed nessescary. The more you devlelop an alternative typesetting system, eventually you will need features that are all already included in TeX. and they are included because they were needed in an advanced typesetting system that would give people the tool needed to highly polished outputs. But TeX is not a system for the masses, nor was it ever meant to be. ¹(There may be systems just as good used by print media)
• mbanerjeepalmer 1y ago
  I've used Typst to produce books (for https://printstack.net https://printstack.net) and it's been excellent. I started with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42271078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42271078 But wouldn't recommend going via Pandoc, for example for this reason: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/discussions/10438 https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/discussions/10438 Some things like #show rules can be a bit confusing. And obviously LLMs can't really help you.
• linsomniac 1y ago
  Any experience with using Typst to produce "pixel perfect" reproductions of existing documents? At work we have a series of contracts that are updated every year, with fillable blanks that we fill in with provided data. We currently use latex for them and have a contractor is very good at making them look basically exactly like the original contracts, but at some point she's going to retire, probably sooner rather than later. Probably our best solution is to decide that we don't care about nearly pixel perfect reproduction of the contract, which probably makes a switch to typst a lot easier.
  • mr_mitm 1y ago
    I've reproduced documents with Typst, mostly pixel perfect. I've done the same in LaTeX before, and it was orders of magnitudes easier with Typst. However, I didn't care if a couple of paragraphs with hundreds of words in them were a line longer or shorter. That might be an issue if you care about literal pixel perfection. But why would that be important in contracts?
  • Gucio 1y ago
    What I tend to do to get the best result is setting the background of the typst document to the document I'm targeting, and then adjusting until it matches perfectly.
• ossner 1y ago
  The crucial component for the success of this, in my opinion, is the acceptance of Typst templates in scientific journals and conferences. The adoption of something like this in universities relies entirely on the adoption by these publishers. I see almost no support in the scientific community for Typst since everyone already has a LaTeX template for a thesis, paper, slides, etc. Researchers need to take the initiative and create a template that is accepted by first a chair, then propagate it in the university and try and get it popular enough so that it hopefully forces the creation of templates for conferences and journals. This is an incredibly long, tedious, (and I am guessing ongoing) process, but one that is crucial for Typst to be a real contender with LaTeX
  • coliveira 1y ago
    We don't want to do this because LaTeX already solves our problems quite well.
  • didericis 1y ago
    I'm probably ignorant to specific issues that make more advanced typesetting for journal submissions necessary, but I don't understand why some academic flavor of markdown isn't the standard. I'd advocate for that before either LaTeX or Typst. I absolutely get the importance of typesetting for people who publish physical books/magazines/etc, but when it comes to research I don't see the value of typsetting anything. Journals or print publishers should be responsible for typsetting submissions to fit their style/paper size/etc, and researchers should just be responsible for delivering their research in a format that's simpler and more content focused.
    • koito17 1y ago
      > I don't understand why some academic flavor of markdown isn't the standard I would argue that is exactly what LaTeX is... I studied mathematics in university, and from what I recall, every major publisher provided a LaTeX template for articles and textbooks. Likewise, pretty much every mathematics presentation uses Beamer slides, and most mathematicians are able to "compile" subsets of LaTeX in their head. Websites like MSE and MO use MathJax precisely so that people can write notation as they would on assignments, notes, papers, etc. Note: I am not saying people particularly like LaTeX as a tool. However, the vast majority of the complaints about LaTeX do seem to be from computer science people. Many mathematics students just create an Overleaf (formerly ShareLaTeX) account and call it a day. Of course, nobody enjoys notes taking 10 seconds to compile, or the first 100 lines of their thesis being a preamble, but the important part is the ability to express notation across a variety of mediums, and the publisher support (as GP mentioned).
• bryanhogan 1y ago
  I had originally dismissed Typst, since at first glance it seemed like some closed online-only tool. But actually there's solutions such as Typstify[1] which works offline, haven't tried it yet but seemed promising. [1]: https://typstify.com/ https://typstify.com/
  • aeve890 1y ago
    Typst is open source. It can be used as a cli tool https://github.com/typst/typst https://github.com/typst/typst
    • ktosobcy 1y ago
      Is the format "open" as well?
      • fourthark 1y ago
        I’m curious what you mean. It’s a language with an open source implementation. Others can and do implement parts of the language - e.g. Pandoc implements a parser and evaluates Typst.
    • colonial 1y ago
      There's also an LSP (Tinymist.) My Typst workflow is all local in VSCode, with the source markup in the left pane and a live preview on the right.
• perlgeek 1y ago
  Long term Latex user here, I've been working on generating automatic invoices in Typst for a year now. On the plus side: * Getting structured data into typst is sooo much simpler than into latex. For latex, you basically have to render a template, and have to know all the crazy escaping rules for special characters. In typst, you can just read a json file, and do the rendering in typst. * Super fast. Love it. * Mostly very easy to use. Minus: * Our invoices are structured as multi-page tables, and widow and orphan prevention in a multi-page table seems to be non-existent. The workarounds we tried were too disruptive (lead to text overlapping other text, for example). * There's a bug in the Python wrapper that means we sometimes don't get a proper error message when there happens to be an error, then we have to recreate the scenario on the command line to find out what the error was. * Docs could be better (but are mostly OK) Overall I'm very happy with typst for this use case.
• Squeeeez 1y ago
  Looking at the examples on the website, I can see the appeal regarding the input. The output makes my head slightly dizzy - not sure why, but like the letters are all slightly off, in both dimensions. Is it just me, or the font/screen combination, or did it occur to anyone else also?
• braincat31415 1y ago
  Is anyone here still using [tg]roff?
• Ademseifu 1y ago
  Yes more
• the__alchemist 1y ago
  I'm working through the tutorial on the WSIWYG official webapp now. The syntax for equations is remarkably intuitive! I tried a few things from guessing after skimming the tutorial, and they mostly worked in the most intuitive way. Here is what I gather this is. A mix of: - Markdown general formatting (images, lists etc) - LaTeX or MathJax-like equation syntax - A rendering engine and software that turns these into pixels Is this right?
• hn-ifs 1y ago
  I'm a masters student, I've gone with a quarto workflow. From quarto markdown to Word, little bit of VBA for tables and images, and to pdf from there if needed. Technically I could go straight to pdf, but not tried that yet.
• malshe 1y ago
  Quarto has typst support. You can create pdf documents quite easily as explained here: https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/typst.html https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/typst.html
• mattxxx 1y ago
  typst is so good! the syntax is cleaner, and it's much easier to write re-usable and clever formatting. LaTeX will have a special spot in my heart, but it's pretty bloated (even minimalist distributions) and suffers from being an early pass at a problem.
• topaz0 1y ago
  The programming parts are very tempting, but I find the philosophy of the math mode input simplification to be questionable. E.g. automatically generating fractions from "/", or removing parentheses depending on whether they are redundant with other grouping. Those are all choices that I want explicit control over, and the most readable choice depends strongly on the details of the expressions. After some digging it's clear that all of that can be overridden without too much effort, but it still seems like a poor default for my use cases.
  • hkmaxpro 1y ago
    I am also not a fan of automatic fraction. BTW, I notice that both of your complaints will be addressed in the next version: https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6672 https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6672 https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6442 https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6442 , see also https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/math-mode-problem/ https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/math-mode-problem/
    • topaz0 1y ago
      FWIW the second part does not address my concern (which was about omitting literal parentheses that are present in the markup, in some cases), though it is related. Personally I think it's already a mistake for bare/unescaped words to indicate markup, or I guess the intention is that they indicate mathematical semantics and then Typst decides the best way to write down that semantics unless you explicitly interfere -- seems like a recipe for confusion whenever Typst's ideas of the mapping from semantics to typography don't quite line up with yours, or the conventions in your field. I'd much rather approach mathematical typesetting with a typesetting language than a mathematical language where somebody else has decided how that math should be typeset, even if it means a sea of backslashes and curly braces. (Edit to add: I guess this means my preference would be option E from the blog post -- I see the extra symbols as far preferable to the ambiguity between content and markup) Also wow, recovering from this breaking change is going to be incredibly painful for somebody.
• fgdelcueto 1y ago
  I had been using LaTeX for 25 years. I gave it a try recently to write a technical paper and I was blown away. I saved so much time. The immediate feedback and the advanced features were impressive. I had to include a budget proposal in one of the chapters and I was able to create a quick script that read a csv file with the different concepts and costs. I would modify the contents of the csv file and the document would update right away. I didn't have to recompile the document as I used to do with LaTeX... the results were there, right away, beautifully formatted. I am very impressed and will definitely consider doing more work with Typst.
• locao 1y ago
  My first thought was "why would anyone want to ditch LaTeX?". But it's been almost 20 years I left academy, so I knew I would be missing something. Reading the comments reminded me of the pain. I didn't see anyone mentioning, maybe it was me "holding it wrong", but boy what have I done to get proper references. After a year or so writing articles I had an unfailing process to get them right, but whenever I tried to explain it to my colleagues I heard "yeah, ok, I'm staying in MS Word". I also did a pixel-perfect template for my university. As a programmer, I never felt so ashamed of sharing something. I felt like it would be selfish to keep it to myself, so I did it, but it almost physically hurt me. After 10 years people stopped emailing me asking for help. Maybe they fixed the template or just ditched LaTeX at all. As I'm planning to get back to academy next year, it was good to learn about Typist.
• xvilka 1y ago
  There is still continued work on LaTeX3[1][2], but it took so long without any release[3], by this time not sure if it will get adopted. [1] https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/ https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/ [2] https://github.com/latex3/latex3 https://github.com/latex3/latex3 [3] https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/572113/whats-the-current-state-of-latex3-2020 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/572113/whats-the-cur...
  • gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
    LaTeX3 has either been cancelled or has already happened, depending on how you look at at. [0] But despite that, LaTeX is still continuously improving, although it will never beat Typst on speed or simpler markup. [0]: https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3 https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3
• anonu 1y ago
  Anyone have success with typesetting in HTML and then printing to PDF? This works really well for me and if your application is web centric then it's an easy win if you need to generate PDFs as well.
  • malshe 1y ago
    I think the go to solution is weasyprint for this? https://github.com/Kozea/WeasyPrint https://github.com/Kozea/WeasyPrint
• mcswell 1y ago
  From the article: "Typst... can, for example, easily split large tables across page breaks, something that LaTeX struggles with even with specialized packages." That would be nice. I remember when I first started working with LaTeX that I was surprised that I needed to decide ahead of time whether a table would fit on one page or not. If Typst can make that decision on its own, that's a step forward. One thing I have not seen mentioned as yet: cross-references. In LaTeX, I can create cross references to anything: page number, table or figure number, even an item in a numbered list. Does Typst have that capability? I saw a package for cross-referencing numbered boxes (it's called statementsp), but it wasn't clear how you xref other things. (Not saying it's not there, it just doesn't jump out at me.)
  • flokl 1y ago
    yes, cross-references are possible by adding an <anchor> and referencing it with @anchor. It works for headings, figures, equations, footnotes, and with a slightly different syntax also for page. [1] Numbered lists are currently not natively supported, only with the package itemize [2]. [1] https://typst.app/docs/reference/model/ref/ https://typst.app/docs/reference/model/ref/ [2] https://typst.app/universe/package/itemize https://typst.app/universe/package/itemize
• jedberg 1y ago
  > Another drawback is the difficulty of learning Typst. The official documentation is confusingly organized, with information scattered unpredictably among "Tutorial", "Reference", and "Guides" sections. They should add Dosu[0] to their repo. Dosu works with a lot of open source packages already. [0] https://dosu.dev https://dosu.dev
• tkw01536 1y ago
  Like other commentators, I have worked with LaTeX for a long time (> 10 years) and have to say that it very much shows its age. For once, the compilation time is terrible - it can take several minutes to compile a typical document. I recently tried to create a poster for a conference - a single A0 page - and even this took more than a minute to compile. Because positioning in images and figures in LaTeX is not obvious, this made iteration extremely slow. Additionally, by forgetting a single bracket, one can easily encounter cryptic error messages relating to boxes. In the past, I have also worked on LaTeXML (the LaTeX-to-HTML "converter" amongst other things being used to power ar5iv [1]). Even though this exposed me to some of (La)TeX's internals, it is still extremely difficult trying to decipher error messages. Typst, on the other hand, is much faster when compiling and provides much clearer error messages. For this reason, I also decided to write my 130-something PhD dissertation in Typst [2]. My university only provided a LaTeX and a Word template, but I ended up copying that in Typst extremely quickly. My thesis compiles in about 7 seconds on my laptop - I cannot imagine how long it would take had I chosen LaTeX instead. Not only that, when I showed an initial draft of my dissertation to my supervisor - also a decades-long LaTeX user - he could not tell that I wasn't using LaTeX. I only really encountered one problem with Typst so far - citation styles. In particular, the alphanumeric style preferred by my field produced duplicate citation keys, making the output unreadable in printed form. But given all the other benefits Typst offered, I ended up switching to IEEE's citation style instead. I am also hoping that Typst improves its HTML export - it is very barebones at the moment - but that seems to be in the works [3]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36947004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36947004 [2] https://doi.org/10.25593/open-fau-1825 https://doi.org/10.25593/open-fau-1825 [3] https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/5512 https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/5512
  • throwaway_7274 1y ago
    Hey, I've had the same problem with duplicate citation keys! I couldn't find an issue on it. One of us should file a bug report.
    • tkw01536 1y ago
      I already did [1]. It got moved into hayagriva, which appears to be the library used to implement citation in typst. [1] https://github.com/typst/hayagriva/issues/255 https://github.com/typst/hayagriva/issues/255
• netbioserror 1y ago
  I'm becoming acutely aware of the first-mover problem in open source software: Nobody truly knows how the software is going to be used in half a century. And once that time is past, the accumulated tech debt of the first-generation tool should probably just be thrown out entirely, for a new second-generation tool that easily does what people have shown they actually want do with it. I've been using Typst for work documentation and hobby authorship. It is unreal how powerful it is out of the box, with no plugins. It's a Turing-complete programming language where you can switch between a code context and a document context with a simple change of brackets. Everything you WISH Latex did out of the box, it does. Highly recommend the VSCode plugin with live PDF generation and automatic scrolling.
• colonial 1y ago
  Another stamp of approval for Typst here. It's simple enough that I can easily typeset CS theory homework (with all the fancy notation that entails) without having to subject myself to the insanity of LaTeX or the friction of a standard word processor. But at the same time, I can also crank out a full paper in a (professor mandated, LaTeX templated) style without raising any eyebrows. The fact that it's a "real" programming language is also lovely - I have a very simple template (took me an ~hour to write) that ingests TOML descriptions of recipes and marshals them into pretty, standardized PDFs for my recipe binder.
• slashdave 1y ago
  Tex was for math lovers. And as a math lover, using a parenthesis for $\arcsin^2 x$ already turns me off to this page.
• jamamp 1y ago
  > Another drawback is the difficulty of learning Typst. The official documentation is confusingly organized, with information scattered unpredictably among "Tutorial", "Reference", and "Guides" sections. I would have thought that this method of organizing documentation is preferred, as I assumed The Grand Unified Theory of Documentation[0] was well known and liked. [0] https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/ https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/
• tiagod 1y ago
  I've written a system that consists of a JS front-end/backend, which then feeds a json object to a typst template to generate PDF reports with hundreds of pages, multipage tables, references to bibliography within the json strings, and translated to multiple languages. It works extremely well, and it's very intuitive to work with it. For example, for the translations, I just made an object with every piece of text in a hierarchical structure, with the leaf being an object with keys for every language and the texts as values. Then I have a function called t() that is created after we already know the language for this report that just extracts the current language string when given an object like #t(content.section1.subsection.header.title) in the main report template (which imports this translations object from another file) For bibliography references, I just have a regex for __REF\d+ that will replace all those references with real bibtex references.
• codedokode 1y ago
  Markdown is an awful choice - it has no definition, and it is difficult once you need something more complicated that a paragraph with a header (for example: a list with multi-paragraph items, forced line break etc).
• xurukefi 1y ago
  The LaTeX community is astonishingly good at gatekeeping. I can't think of another field where the adoption of a clearly superior modern alternative has been so slow. For some reason, they seem to take pride in clinging to a 50-year-old typesetting system—with its bloated footprint, sluggish compilation, incomprehensible error messages, and a baroque syntax that nobody truly understands. People have simply learned just enough to make it work, and now they treat that fragile familiarity as a virtue.
  • dev_l1x_be 1y ago
    The problem is that with Latex i end up in the same situation like in Word. I do not understand what is happenig and why. Typst was an amazing addition to the modern IT stack. I use it whenever I can. The only issue is that companies like Google and Micrososft are dominating the collaboration space and I have zero chance to convince a comany to adopt Typst for internal documents that need to look good. It would be great though.
• bolangi 1y ago
  Don't forget other alternatives. On the pre-unicode side, we have lout http://jeffreykingston.id.au/lout/ http://jeffreykingston.id.au/lout/ . On the postmodern side, we have rakudoc https://raku.github.io/rakudoc https://raku.github.io/rakudoc .
• hacb 1y ago
  I'm teaching compsci at university, and since a few years I create all the material I use (slides, exams, sometimes booklets) in Typst. It does perfectly the job, and it's fast. I'm 100% convinced, even tho I was not a big LaTeX user before, so can't compare the two.
• sombragris 1y ago
  I doubt it would come to completely replace LaTeX. The momentum behind LaTeX is enormous. Having said that, if it manages to simplify language handling, fonts, and bibliographhies it would be great. But, especially, it would be good to see whether it improves on LaTeX's handling of tabulars (tables) and floats (figures), somethingh that is kind of an esoteric art right now. I wish Typst the best.
• dkga 1y ago
  As an economist, I write papers for a living. I use quarto markdown, which takes latex and typst and leverages pandoc behind the scenes to render PDFs or other formats. It’s as easy as it gets.
• vladdoster 1y ago
  The git repository[0] for your typist to latex filter in the “transform” article[1] you link in the conclusion returns a 403 error :/ I’d love to see the code [0]https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters/code https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters/code [1] https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters
  • leephillips 1y ago
    Do a `git clone` as it says on the page.
    • vladdoster 1y ago
      ah, I assumed it would be visible in the browser since it said read only. I stand corrected.
• Ericson2314 1y ago
  LaTeX is a horrible system, that has some fans who are basically cultists. I suppose people like it cause Knuth, but remember Knuth just made Tex. Imagine if C++ had stayed a hodge podge of extra tools compiling to C and C macros? That's LaTeX relative to TeX. Typst should win and destroy all this stuff. If was in control of government science funding, I would just make all the journals accept it immediately, just like the open access arm twisting. Academics are too precarious to self-advocate, and have been slaves to LaTeX's bullshit for too long. I'm grad procrastinating grad students are writing Typst packages to liberate them. Best of luck to everyone involved.
  • zzless 1y ago
    This is a fine opinion, here is another one. Calling everyone who uses LaTeX cultists is a bit insulting. I do not particularly like LaTeX and use it only when a journal requires it in which case it is pretty much painless as I simply follow the provided template. TeX, on the other hand pretty much satisfies all my typesetting needs and I use it daily. I wish everyone would use TeX or LaTeX but I would not force it on everyone. Typst seems like a fine if a bit immature system but I truly hope it goes away, the sooner the better. Not because it is bad at what it does but because it solves a problem that does not exist and distracts from a standard that may not be perfect but has proved itself again and again. I am also weary of any piece of software that is controlled by a private entity, no matter how good the initial intentions are. Being open source is not really a guarantee of anything.
    • Ericson2314 1y ago
      I did not call everyone that uses LaTeX a cultist, I called everyone that is a fan of it a cultist. > because it solves a problem that does not exist No, the problems with LaTeX are real, objective, and undeniable. > I am also weary of any piece of software that is controlled by a private entity, no matter how good the initial intentions are. Being open source is not really a guarantee of anything. That is valid, but it does not excuse the accumulation of bad technical quality in LaTeX. Living in the stone age is not an efficacious solution to the problem of Typst's governance.
• Too 1y ago
  Why do we need these special languages just to get adequate typesetting and kerning? In the end it’s just a paragraph of text constrained to a column. Because let’s be honest, this is why most people use LaTeX, not because they enjoy how to place a picture in a bullet list with cryptic syntax. Let’s ignore math for now. Can’t the browser do this with HTML and CSS? From there you can go even further with standard tooling, generating from markdown.
• jpgvm 1y ago
  If Github would add native rendering for Typst it would be really nice replacement for Markdown for READMEs.
• Myrmornis 1y ago
  This looks amazing. I made this WYSIWYG-ish LaTeX editing environment for Emacs which renders things in-line as you type: https://github.com/dandavison/xenops https://github.com/dandavison/xenops Does anything like that exist for Typst? I.e. something where you edit the same document that is rendering, rather than exporting or side-by-side live preview?
• fl0id 1y ago
  The immediate no for scientific collaborations is zotero support being paid only. If it was just one user, sure they could decide to pay. But no way I am convincing others to sign up. (If this is somehow possible without paying while not ‚syncing‘ it’s not obvious)
  • flokl 1y ago
    If the project owner has paid for pro, all collaborators can use the pro features in the project. Zotero sync is just a .bib file that updates itself regularly, so if you don't want to pay, you have to upload the .bib file or past the new entries manually.
• type0 1y ago
  Is typst prefect, of course not, but it's good enough for most people. LaTeX on the other hand is the primary example where perfect is the enemy of the good.
• thiagowfx 1y ago
  It is amazing to see a modern take on LaTeX. Previously I had great success with LyX (https://www.lyx.org/ https://www.lyx.org/), which builds on top of LaTeX. The experience of typesetting beamer slides with it is relatively user-friendly. A decent usage example of Typst is https://rendercv.com/ https://rendercv.com/. It is a set of Typst templates to build resumés.
• ckunte 1y ago
  With the wisdom from a TU Delft graduate student, I switched from Word to LaTeX in 2007, having never known or used it ever before, and never looked back for the next seventeen years. Using it within the corp. environ. (Shell) became progressively harder as time went by due to the need to install such a large installation (under Cygwin, which itself got on the list of not-allowed, and had to resort to `setup-x86_64.exe --no-admin` for nearly all my subsequent time there). While I appreciate LaTeX structure, and the resulting end product (Knuth is God), it is as you know highly verbose in markup, thereby making the content somewhat unclean, and not easily readable like plain text (my yardstick on content readability and re-usability). I wrote multiple plug-ins for the text editors of my choice Sublime Text, and Vim to produce snippets for writing ease. - https://github.com/ckunte/latex-snippets-st https://github.com/ckunte/latex-snippets-st - https://github.com/ckunte/latex-snippets-vim https://github.com/ckunte/latex-snippets-vim Switched to Typst cautiously in 2023, and have never since looked back. If LaTeX was the gold standard for the 20th century, I think Typst is on track to become that for the 21st. I wrote a little note about writing a template for Typst to remind myself how-to, and for anyone I'm working with: - https://ckunte.net/2025/template https://ckunte.net/2025/template
• _giorgio_ 1y ago
  LaTeX is a wonderful tool. The only real complication comes from the multiple packages (a novice doesn't know what are the standards), and from the big installation, it's really frustrating, it is something from 40 years ago. I use http://www.overleaf.com http://www.overleaf.com, which works nicely, although the size of each tex is limited by the compile time.
• michaelcampbell 1y ago
  I like this sort of thing, but I will never understand why all the common ASCII -> Layout apps DON'T use /for italics/ and _for underlines_. It's baffling.
• Diti 1y ago
  AFAIK, Typst doesn’t handle multilanguage documents well, and hyphenation in particular. I had to go back to XeTeX because of this.
• earthnail 1y ago
  I just wrote up the solution for a combinatorics problem in Typst. It was my first time using it. Wow, it is so smooth, it's unbelievable. After this little exercise I'm 100% sold. For homework-like tasks, Typst is so much easier to use than Latex. I can accept that Latex is still required for journals, but as more and more in academia will use Typst for their smaller day to day jobs, I'm hopeful that one day it will be accepted with journals as well.