this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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I ๐Ÿ–ค LaTeX (mander.xyz)
submitted 4 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[โ€“] starman@programming.dev 29 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

You guys should try https://typst.app/

[โ€“] udon@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I've seen this floating around a few times but am too tired to invest energy into this specific hype train. What exactly makes it stand apart from latex or markdown (then pandoced into latex)? Genuine question. I think once you've found your way around Latex, the major pain IMHO is whenever you apply it for a new use case and need to find out which packages to load that are not outdated. Ah, and alt text for images. But AFAIR this is already mostly solved, just not shipped widely yet.

Pros of Latex I think are important to keep in mind:

  • it works since ever and for probably the rest of all our careers
  • there is an established community
  • the codebase doesn't change on a whim
[โ€“] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Pros of typst:

  • It makes you happy while using it because it just works
  • Packages are available in typst universe and you don't need to install 2000 Debian packages to be able to use it reasonably because most things are just available
  • There are some super cool packages like that diagrams one, or that inline comments one.
  • If you have an error, it tells you what the fucking problem is instead of printing 2000 lines of crap and saying overfull hbox 200 times
  • There are many templates for all kinds of purposes
  • Math mode is a bit different from latex but mich easier to remember since you often just write things out. Fractions are just done with /, more complicated things are just writing the name out. It's actually rather intuitive.
  • The documentation is much better than latex, especially for the base language.
  • It's fast as fuck. My bachelor Thesis builds in milliseconds. No need to build 3 times over with each being 5 seconds.
  • Like overleaf? typst.app has that too. Local works just as well though. Language server for neovim or other editors exist too.
  • It's actually programmable with variables and loops and conditionals and functions and all that if you need it.

Probably some more, just wrote a little list after waking up out of my head

[โ€“] udon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for the long list! I'm not "opposed" to typst, whatever that would mean, just a bit cautious picking up new workflows/investing into skills that may become irrelevant 2 years later. But it seems that for my use case the main advantage are more useful error messages (which does suck sometimes using latex). I also see a potential new use case, if I need to use/create a new template, which can take some time with latex. The other points are not really bothering me. I write my texts in vim and build the pdf later, once the text is finished. Latex is fast enough for that.

[โ€“] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 1 points 1 day ago

I write my stuff in neovim with latex. Works really well. There is a live preview plugin if you want that too.

[โ€“] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago

It's blazing fast, too, when compared with LaTeX. And another WIP feature I'm particularly excited about: HTML export.

[โ€“] starman@programming.dev 4 points 4 days ago

I believe I can't help you with this, because my motivations behind using it are different. I've only used latex for fun before, and now I use typst instead of regular word processor, whenever I need to create a PDF.

[โ€“] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 days ago

Love Typst, and I hope it takes off.

[โ€“] Sphks@jlai.lu 3 points 4 days ago

Wow. This looks fantastic. I remember using LaTeX and having a love/hate relationship.