Typst: a possible LaTeX replacement
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Typst is a program for document typesetting. It is especially well-suited to technical material incorporating elements such as mathematics, tables, and floating figures. It produces high-quality results, comparable to the gold standard, LaTeX, with a simpler markup system and easier customization, all while compiling documents more quickly. Typst is free software, Apache-2.0 licensed, and is written in Rust.
Desire for a LaTeX replacement
LaTeX is a document typesetting system built on the foundation of Donald Knuth's TeX. LaTeX has become the standard tool for the preparation of scholarly papers and books in several fields, such as mathematics and computer science, and widely adopted in others, such as physics. TeX and LaTeX, which predate Linux, are early free software success stories. The quality of TeX's (and therefore LaTeX's) output rivals the work of skilled hand typesetters for both text and mathematics.
Despite the acclaim earned by LaTeX, its community of users has been griping about it for years, and wondering aloud whether one day a replacement might arrive. There are several reasons for this dissatisfaction: the LaTeX installation is huge, compilation of large documents is not fast, and its error messages are riddles delivered by an infuriating oracle. In addition, any nontrivial customization or alteration to the program's behavior requires expertise in an arcane macro-expansion language.
Along with the griping came resignation: after decades of talk about a LaTeX replacement with nothing plausible on the horizon, and with the recognition that LaTeX's collection of specialized packages would take years to replace, it seemed impossible to dislodge the behemoth from its exalted position.
Introducing Typst
In 2019 two German developers, Laurenz Mädje and Martin Haug, decided to try to write a LaTeX replacement "just for fun". In 2022, Mädje wrote his computer science master's thesis about Typst. In March 2023, its first pre-release beta version was announced; a month later, semantic versioning was adopted with the release of v0.1.0. Typst is now at v.0.13.1 and shows 365 contributors on its GitHub repository.
I had been aware of this project for over a year but had not paid much attention, assuming it to be yet another attempt to supplant LaTeX that was doomed to fail. A rising chorus of enthusiasm among early adopters, and the beginnings of acceptance of Typst manuscripts by scholarly journals, made me curious enough to take the young project for a spin.
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