Typst is cool
A nice alternative to LaTeX, or for markdown for this site
This site now uses typst! Which is quite cool I think.
It supports maths[1], both inline (e.g. ) and block:
I can also write bold and italicised text just like i would in markdown (using *bold* and _italics_). Pretty cool!
Headings exist…
…and they can be smaller and centred too!
The only problem is that it's quite difficult to get things to display properly as HTML[2]! A lot of things need to be implemented manually. Which is totally unacceptable fine actually. It means I get to implement these things myself and possibly publish my own template for them. How exciting!
The things I like the most about typst are:
- it's much easier to read than latex
- it's quick to compile
- native html exporting!!!!!!!
- it's written in rust (🚀)… which on its own doesn't mean much, but it uses some really clever design patterns (in my opinion) which are not possible in other languages
Things I'd like to see improved are:
- documentation - i feel at the moment the reference section of the documentation reads more like a tutorial than a technical reference in some places
- …more native html stuff i guess? but i know that's in active development, and it's actually quite fun to do it myself. It would be nice to have better warnings for elements which aren't implemented yet though.
- nothing else (yet)
[1] I could already use mathsy stuff here (see this post), but since that post was written I changed how maths was rendered to use katex instead. but no longer! ↑
[2] Footnotes were particularly difficult!!! ↑