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dev_l1x_be

For me Typst replaced Latex years ago.

pros:

- one small compiler that can output: pdf, png, svg, html

- compilation is fast (see below)

- syntax is much cleaner than Latex

- few ways of to a thing

- already has all the templates most people need

- tooling is good enough with VS Code

- supports SVG images

cons:

- less users?

      time typst compile cv.typ
    ________________________________________________________
    Executed in  126.21 millis    fish           external
      usr time   93.66 millis    0.07 millis   93.58 millis
      sys time   37.97 millis    1.51 millis   36.46 millis

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A big con is that there are no typst templates for journals and conferences that academics submit papers to. For me, this is a show-stopper. I would love to be able to ditch latex because honestly it's old and it shows a lot, in spite of apologists saying that it's perfect. But 90+% of my usage starts from a conference or journal template, so at the moment it's not gonna happen.

I don't feel like the template itself is the issue. In typst it's quite easy to recreate the templates without being years into typst (according to my experience).

The real problem is acceptance of non-word/latex papers

The problem is the user-base and acceptance of latex vs Typst. I use latex and as aware as I am about its deficiencies, I can create a doc faster in it than any other tool that I have not ever used before. I also have a bunch of utilities I created for my specific use-cases automating data into tables, figures, etc, ready for latex import.

So its a mass and momentum problem. Typst not only has to be better/easier/faster than latex, but to a degree that it justifies all of the labor and time to learn it and change all that existing template and utility infrastructure built up over decades. A high bar.

If Typst (or some other new contender) could also read and compile latex code and packages alongside its own syntax then that would be a game-changer. Then I can use all my old stuff and gradually change things over to typst (or whatever).

I used latex for over 20 years.

Typst is a breath of fresh air. Interacting with modern tooling (GitHub, discord). Responsive developers. Easy to read code. Easy to do things on your own.

Admittedly, my use case is mainly writing books, I've never published an academic paper.

The other option is people who never got into LaTeX get into Typst (usually by being too young to have gotten into LaTeX in college), and Typst takes over slowly that way.

Until Typst showed up I was a heavy Latex user. My co-workers did not buy into it (Latex) because their claimed that using Google Docs / Docs is faster.

My experience with word processing is that spending a lot more time on UI bugs and incosistencies using any wysiwyg editors, compare to those any markup based system (md, latex, typst) is significant improvement. Typst is just simply faster, cleaner alternative to LaTex. I hope it gets much more popular.

But I thought one of the points of latex was to emit pdf files? Are you saying these places are so backwards they only accept latex and word files? What stops them being edited by someone?

Scientific journals do edit the TeX file. Both to update the visual style (e.g. enabling commercial fonts that they use for print but are not allowed to distribute with the template), and to update the content itself (to revise the grammatical style to fit the style guide followed by that journal, to update scientific references to have clickable links, etc.). Usually, at the end of all these edits, the journal sends a PDF “proof” back to the authors to verify that the final version is OK, or ask for corrections if they broke something (which they often do).

> The real problem is acceptance of non-word/latex papers

Some scientific journals, which only provides a Word template, require you to print to PDF to submit, then ships this PDF to India, where a team recreates the look of the submission in LaTeX, which is then used to compose the actual journal. I wish this was hyperbole. For these journals, you can safely create a LaTeX-template looking _almost_ the same, and get away with it.

The real problem is that LaTeX is often an interchange format. Whatever tools you use to write the paper, they must ultimately output LaTeX. In the publisher's template, using only the features and packages approved by the publisher, and consistent with any other requirements the publisher may have. The publisher then takes the LaTeX output and processes it further to generate the actual document in whatever format they prefer.

Have you checked out Quarto? There are a lot of templates supported already, and possible to create out of latex if not (or just generate latex from Quarto).

These journals have no incentive to include it. This is a classical chicken and egg problem.

Is there any side-by-side comparison of a page created by LaTeX by Typst?

My main selling points is that with LaTeX, it is easy to create typography shines beauty for a distance. (Often way better that most of books you find in stores.) With other typesetting systems, usually it is not the case. Yet, I am waiting for new things that offer simplicity, yet have same (or better!) visuals that LaTeX.

As far as I know, the main differences (in the body text) between LaTeX and, say, Word, are the linebreaking algorithm (Knuth-Plass, which is used for both ragged-right and justified text) and the microtypography package. Is there anything else that contributes to the quality of LaTeX's output for ordinary English text?

Typst apparently uses Knuth-Plass, but I don't see any information about microtypography.

From what I see, it is also section breaking, fonts, and general typesetting defaults, such as margins, section, etc (sure, they vary from package to package, and some are ugly, but the default are aesthetically pleasing).

Oh true, section breaking is also important. And figure placement.

Things like default margins, in my opinion, are a lot easier to fix than these other issues.

Typst is a pretty good alternative to LaTeX and I agree all pros in your comment, with only one major deal breaker now: its CJK support is not mature enough and not producation-ready yet.

I wrote a post half year ago explained the details for my decision between LaTeX and Typst: https://blog.ppresume.com/posts/on-typesetting-engines#typst

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