Typst is a new markup-based typesetting system that is designed to be as powerful as LaTeX while being much easier to learn and use
Typst is awesome, in particular if you want to generate documents programmatically.
I am currently using it from a backend to generate pdfs.
One thing that prevents me from letting users build their own templates is the scripting capabilities. A joker creating an endless loop could block the whole server.
What would be nice is a “safe” mode in which no access to the file system (include and sorts) and limited runtime makes it safe to let users build their own templates.
One thing that prevents me from letting users build their own templates is the scripting capabilities. A joker creating an endless loop could block the whole server.
I know little about servers, but can’t you run the generation in a thread with a timeout or so? Or maybe compile to wasm and let the generation run on the users machines? I also know little about wasm, but I’d have guessed it has facilities to keep runtime and load under control.
What would be nice is a “safe” mode in which no access to the file system (include and sorts) and limited runtime makes it safe to let users build their own templates.
Ah, are you by chance shelling out to the typst binary? You can actually use typst as a library, and then you’ve got full control over the files involved, so it’s “safe” in that respect.
DUDE!
You are the man!
I did know it was built in rust but never realized I could also use it as a library!
🎉
Yeah I was very happy to find that out. I was calling latex externally before, and there was a lot of pain interacting with the filesystem and temporary files. Now it all happens in-memory :)
I haven’t used latex in 20+ years, so it’s not real fresh for me but this looks like a great alternative.
Using typst since some months - way saner than latex
Do you mind sharing your experience? What kind of documents have you been writing and how easy has it been to adopt? Any frustrations or issues?
I use typst.app mostly, but used typst for formulas in quarto and in Makie.jl for combining scientific figures with complex formulas.I wrote some smaller documents and one paper collaboratively as of yet. Speed is amazing, error messages are interpretable.
The git integration works ok, once we had an issue with a weird branch problem but more on our side, but there is no way to fix it from typst.app right now.
What is missing is a suggestion-feature, mimicking track changes in word. E.g. overleaf has this (but not super nice imho).
Coming from a hacky-latex experience (not a latex dev in any way) of >10 years, the switch was immediate and easy. All that arcane knowledge I can now forget, figure, captions etc. just work.
I don’t have experience with super crazy long formulas, not a mathematician.
But yeah, I was super sceptical at first - I mean, the promise to replace latex is a bit insane. But for my stuff, it just works.
Just try it at typst.app, maybe you don’t even need to register, I don’t remember.
I didn’t know about this project, it looks promissing.
This is a great project. The way it handles mixing markup and code is on point. Also, for drawing its CeTZ is so much nicer than TiKZ, the LaTeX equivalent. I made some great graphics with it for a seminar presentation and paper that I couldn’t have done anywhere near as easily with LaTeX. (The presentation slides I made entirely with Typst, the paper had a LaTeX template that I didn’t feel like remaking because it was huge so I just embedded the graphics I made with Typst)
There are a few typst packages for making presentation slides. Which one did you use?
