typst VS KeenWrite

I may be a tad late, but typst does have a compiler you can use locally with your favorite local text editor.

https://github.com/typst/typst/releases

I am happily experimenting with Typst right now (https://typst.app/ ), which compiles much faster than LaTeX and with a syntax very similar to md, together with nice support for math, figures and advanced settings.

Check out [typest](https://typst.app/) if you're looking to write a book yourself.

[Hypermedia Systems book](https://hypermedia.systems/) was written with it.

This [issue](https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/4224) and others like it are dealbreakers for me. There are numerous related issues, but the developers are stubbornly sticking to their interpretation—using the older definition of leading from the days of metal type, rather than the more modern concept of line-spacing. No other software or modern typesetting system I know of uses this approach anymore. This is particularly frustrating since I work with a lot of multilingual text, including Arabic, and it's very difficult to align the baselines when setting text in more than one column.

- Long-form, print-friendly report generation, including data visualization, tables and images

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

I somehow didn't know about https://github.com/typst/typst. This is a really cool project, going to dig in further.

At first glance, this seems particularly useful for scientific-style notebooks, which aren't our primary focus. If the demand is there though, I don't see why we couldn't integrate.

It's kinda early, but we're looking at collaborating with https://typst.app/ (a modern LaTeX alternative) on this. They already have some of the low-level PDF writing infrastructure in place, and are working on something higher-level that we're hoping to use.

(you could also look at using Typst directly if you're not tied to HTML)

I think that I need something in between. Recently, I was checking typst. It is quite impressive. But I am not sure if I need a better LaTeX.

I think the previous author is confused because if you google "Typst", you end up at https://typst.app, which seems to only advertise the web GUI and not the open-source CLI tool.

> Now, it’s certainly possible that one could develop a new, generative typesetting language that captures the virtues that I’ve discussed above and is free of TeX’s historical baggage.

Like [typst](https://github.com/typst/typst)?

KeenWrite is my free, open-source, cross-platform desktop Markdown editor that can produce beautifully typeset PDFs. I started working on it years ago to help write a novel that has a complex timeline and I couldn't find a text editor that would allow me to integrate a character sheet with the story itself.

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

Tutorials:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...

Here's what I mean by using variables directly:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFCqe3A5dFg

CommonMark doesn't propose a standard for bibliographic references. Would anyone find the editor more appealing if it had cross-references and citations?

My cross-platform desktop text editor, KeenWrite, allows users to define variables in an external YAML file. The editor calls out to Kroki[1] to convert text-based diagrams to SVG. The diagrams can reference variables and are rendered using EchoSVG[2].

KeenWrite[3] can produce PDF documentation from Markdown documents that has PlantUML diagrams with elements stored in an external, machine-readable file. Here are screenshots showing variables on the left, diagram text in the middle, and a real-time render on the right:

* https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/main/...

* https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/main/...

KeenWrite supports all diagrams offered by Kroki, which includes "diagram-plantuml".

[1]: https://kroki.io/

[2]: https://github.com/css4j/echosvg/

[3]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

Although not interactive, I've created a video series that shows advanced usage of Markdown. Namely R, external variables, diagrams, math, annotations, and a different approach to metadata:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...

Tutorial 4 shows basic Markdown:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNbGSiRzx-0

The top-right of each video shows keyboard and mouse clicks to help follow along.[1] My desktop text editor, KeenWrite[2], is used in the tutorials.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/kmcaster

[2]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/main/scripts/bu...

My template script provides a way to make user-friendly shell scripts. In a script that uses the template, you define the dependencies and their sources:

    DEPENDENCIES=(

I didn't create the fork, nor am I affiliated with the project. I use it in my text editor, KeenWrite to rasterize SVG.

KeenWrite Themes[1] are instructions that tell ConTeXt how to typeset XHTML documents (content) into PDF files (presentation). I made a tutorial that shows how my FOSS desktop text editor, KeenWrite[3], allows users to write in Markdown to typeset a document against a particular theme.

Before it can be used for scientific papers, it needs cross-references, which, unfortunately, aren't part of the CommonMark specification.

I posit that the vast majority of LaTeX users don't grok how to separate content from presentation. When I asked a question on TeX.SE about how to adjust the line spacing between enumerated items (spanning a couple dozen enumerated lists), the vast majority of people voted for the answer of using `\itemsep0em` to tweak each list ... individually.[4] The correct answer, IMO, is to fix the problem globally, and not waste time tweaking individual lists.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QpX70O5S30

[3]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

[4]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6081/reduce-space-be...