Hacker News Reader

> As we’ve seen, TeX’s model falls short on everything that requires knowledge of exact vertical positions:

Interestingly, classical CSS had a similar limitation, that height is determined by content size, leading practitioners to search for the Holy Grail [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_grail_(web_design)

View on HN

Not surprising, of course, given that both are (originally) document-layout systems first and foremost, and given that we write horizontal lines, the primary layouting constraint has always been the width of the page/monitor/clay tablet/whatever, and the text (and possible other content) then just flows to whatever "height" is required (or until one runs out of space).

Also interestingly, Chrome began supporting pagination recently[0] which until now required something like pagedjs. I wonder to what extent Typst's (or TeX's) layout model can map onto CSS now. I would assume concepts like widow and orphan prevention are not implemented but I haven't looked into it.

[0] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/print-margins

Reply on news.ycombinator.com