patoline VS typst

Patoline

There is https://patoline.github.io/ but it's been in alpha / active development for years now.

I agree that TeX's errors is one of the worst things about it. Strongly suggest you track your changes in git, I found it was often easier to go back to some version that compiled and re-add the changes, rather than try and track down the missing bracket or extra backslash that broke it.

But try to consider "dirtying your hands with code", maybe LaTeX is not the appropriate tool, but something newer like SILE, Patoline or similar technology may be good for you. Yes, you already said you want something drag and drop, but this other approach.

there was a project but it seems abandoned

https://github.com/patoline/patoline

https://github.com/typst/typst looks promising, both the language and the tooling. I wonder where it will find its place in a world that is dominated by either Word or LaTex.

I hope in a couple of years we start seeing posts like these with Typst instead of LaTeX. It seems like setting this up would be a bit easier since Typst is much more concise than LaTeX.

[0] https://github.com/typst/typst

For writing math notes (especially in vim), I switch to using Typst (https://typst.app).

Here's a few points:

- The syntax is a lot lighter and easier to type fast. I was up and running in half hour after starting to use it. Once in a while I can look up some symbol name in the docs but that's about it.

- Empty document is a valid document. No preambles, no includes etc, it's all optional and the defaults are sensible. Just start typing.

- It's incremental. Live preview from neovim is in the browser and it's lightning fast, pretty much immediate. No pdf sync pain. No build files, makefiles and all that. Just start typing.

While it's not going to beat latex in terms of serious academic use, for personal use and notes it's close to perfect.

(And of course it's written in Rust...)

Except the main theme, which was HTML export? https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/721

Though it's in the roadmap!

I don't use LaTeX for anything these days but Typst popped up recently and seems like a decent alternative: https://github.com/typst/typst

I am surprised that no one mentions the typst. It is super smooth with typst-preview.

I suggest you ask in the discord channel: https://discord.gg/2uDybryKPe. Or open an issue or question on GitHub: https://github.com/typst/typst