4 ms·

At the risk of making a fool of myself in-front of the rest of the class, I will come out and admit I don't know what the article is talking about. > Last summ

At the risk of making a fool of myself in-front of the rest of the class, I will come out and admit I don't know what the article is talking about. > Last summer I spent a lot of time with Typst (at that point v0.11) and Pandoc, working on a flexible and reusable workflow to typeset markdown-formatted articles to PDF. I understand that Typst is a markup language that can output a pdf file (big Typst fan btw). I understand Pandoc is a thing that transforms documents of one kind to documents of another, ie markdown to html. But the author wants to "typeset markdown-formatted article to PDF". Which makes me wonder what this has to do with typst at all.

thornewolf 4mo ago
The author explain this in more detail in the article; I also was initially confused. The key details come from their broken down pandoc command. Specifically, these two flags: --pdf-engine=typst -V template=article.typ Despite the input content being a .md file, we see that the .md contents populate the .typ file. Pandoc then understands how to convert the populated .typ file into a .pdf. The author also notes in their hyperlinked .typ document where the body content is placed: // THIS IS THE ACTUAL BODY: What is not clear to me is the actual mechanism that tells pandoc where to place the body contents in the template. I presume it's some "magic" from the pandoc docs. The pandoc templates documentation[1] does reveal to us that `-V` is setting a variable called `template`. I don't have pandoc locally, but from another post[2] from the same author and a chatgpt query, it seems that the `body` symbol in the template is the chosen substitution symbol. [1]: https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/6-templates.html https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/6-templates.html [2]: https://imaginarytext.ca/posts/2024/pandoc-typst-tutorial/ https://imaginarytext.ca/posts/2024/pandoc-typst-tutorial/
- alethic 4mo ago
  Pandoc templates use $...$ or ${...} for variable substitution, yes. body is one of the special default variables: the rest are documented in the manual. If you scroll to the bottom of the template linked from the article, you'll notice a $body$, along with a number of $if(...)$ $endif$ conditionals. (This actually interferes with Typst's math mode. But you can manually construct math blocks, so no real problem. Pandoc variables are only valid within templates anyway.) https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#variables-set-automatically https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#variables-set-automatically
  - sedimannapoleon 4mo ago
    [dead]
__mharrison__ 4mo ago
I'll give an example. I write Python, software engineering, and data science books in Jupyter. (Because I want both text and code). I've written my own toolchain (multiple times, don't ask, yes, I've tried the one you're thinking of and it didn't work for me). I need to convert the notebooks into chapters in my books (PDF so I can print them). In the past, I used code to convert to LaTeX. (It was horrible). Now, I use code to convert the Jupyter file to markdown, then (I use pandoc too) to typst. (It is 100x better than LaTeX). (I also use pandoc to convert markdown to epub).
- trostaft 4mo ago
  > (multiple times, don't ask, yes, I've tried the one you're thinking of and it didn't work for me). I know you didn't want questions, but maybe you can save me some trouble? Assuming you're talking about quarto, may I ask what you didn't like about it? I've been converting some of my course materials to it and have been enjoying it immensely.
  - __mharrison__ 4mo ago
    Quarto is one of them. When I checked it out, it wasn't usable for printed books (focused on papers). At that point (it's even easier now), I just painted my own bikeshed rather than dealing with others' weird angles and flooring.
- cbolton 4mo ago
  For what's it's worth you can render Jupyter notebooks directly from Typst using the Callisto package. You can then style the notebook content as if it was written in Typst, using show rules, etc: #import "@preview/callisto:0.2.5" #callisto.render(nb: json("notebook.ipynb")) though as the sibling comment says Quarto also works great for this, and Typst doesn't do epub (yet?)
  - __mharrison__ 4mo ago
    Again, this is simplistic and not appropriate for a printed book...

thornewolf 4mo ago

The author explain this in more detail in the article; I also was initially confused. The key details come from their broken down pandoc command. Specifically, these two flags: --pdf-engine=typst -V template=article.typ Despite the input content being a .md file, we see that the .md contents populate the .typ file. Pandoc then understands how to convert the populated .typ file into a .pdf. The author also notes in their hyperlinked .typ document where the body content is placed: // THIS IS THE ACTUAL BODY: What is not clear to me is the actual mechanism that tells pandoc where to place the body contents in the template. I presume it's some "magic" from the pandoc docs. The pandoc templates documentation[1] does reveal to us that `-V` is setting a variable called `template`. I don't have pandoc locally, but from another post[2] from the same author and a chatgpt query, it seems that the `body` symbol in the template is the chosen substitution symbol. [1]: https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/6-templates.html https://pandoc.org/demo/example33/6-templates.html [2]: https://imaginarytext.ca/posts/2024/pandoc-typst-tutorial/ https://imaginarytext.ca/posts/2024/pandoc-typst-tutorial/

alethic 4mo ago
Pandoc templates use $...$ or ${...} for variable substitution, yes. body is one of the special default variables: the rest are documented in the manual. If you scroll to the bottom of the template linked from the article, you'll notice a $body$, along with a number of $if(...)$ $endif$ conditionals. (This actually interferes with Typst's math mode. But you can manually construct math blocks, so no real problem. Pandoc variables are only valid within templates anyway.) https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#variables-set-automatically https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#variables-set-automatically
- sedimannapoleon 4mo ago
  [dead]

__mharrison__ 4mo ago

I'll give an example. I write Python, software engineering, and data science books in Jupyter. (Because I want both text and code). I've written my own toolchain (multiple times, don't ask, yes, I've tried the one you're thinking of and it didn't work for me). I need to convert the notebooks into chapters in my books (PDF so I can print them). In the past, I used code to convert to LaTeX. (It was horrible). Now, I use code to convert the Jupyter file to markdown, then (I use pandoc too) to typst. (It is 100x better than LaTeX). (I also use pandoc to convert markdown to epub).

trostaft 4mo ago
> (multiple times, don't ask, yes, I've tried the one you're thinking of and it didn't work for me). I know you didn't want questions, but maybe you can save me some trouble? Assuming you're talking about quarto, may I ask what you didn't like about it? I've been converting some of my course materials to it and have been enjoying it immensely.
- __mharrison__ 4mo ago
  Quarto is one of them. When I checked it out, it wasn't usable for printed books (focused on papers). At that point (it's even easier now), I just painted my own bikeshed rather than dealing with others' weird angles and flooring.
cbolton 4mo ago
For what's it's worth you can render Jupyter notebooks directly from Typst using the Callisto package. You can then style the notebook content as if it was written in Typst, using show rules, etc: #import "@preview/callisto:0.2.5" #callisto.render(nb: json("notebook.ipynb")) though as the sibling comment says Quarto also works great for this, and Typst doesn't do epub (yet?)
- __mharrison__ 4mo ago
  Again, this is simplistic and not appropriate for a printed book...