These are some notes I wrote when I started out with typst when comparing with LaTeX:

1. It doesn't generate 5 bloody files when compiling.

2. Compiling is instant.

3. Diagnostics are way easier to understand (sort of like Rust compiler suggestion style).

4. List items can be either - item1 - item2, etc. or [item1], [item2]. The latter is way better because you can use anchoring to match on the braces (like "%" in vim), which means navigating long item entries is much easier.

5. In latex you have the \document{...} where you can't specify macros so they need to be at the top, in Typst you can specify the macros close to where you need them.

6. It's easier to version control and diff, especially if you use semantic line breaks.

7. Changing page layout, margins, spacing between things, etc., footers with page counters, etc. just seems way easier to do.

8. Programming with it is lovely. Its got a little interpreted language built in, with helper functions like json("some_file.json"). I wrote a paper in it, and used that extensively to populate all my result tables. (Benchmark script -> JSON files -> typst compiled the results directly into the PDF).

> 5. In latex you have the \document{...} where you can't specify macros so they need to be at the top, in Typst you can specify the macros close to where you need them.

You can define macros anywhere you want, but you can only load packages in the preamble (before \begin{document}). I'm not familiar with Typst, but I would assume that it also requires you to load packages at the top of the document (or at least that's the only place that you would want to load packages).

> 6. It's easier to version control and diff, especially if you use semantic line breaks.

Semantic line breaks should be totally fine with LaTeX too.

> 2. Compiling is instant.

> 3. Diagnostics are way easier to understand (sort of like Rust compiler suggestion style).

Agreed, these are definitely LaTeX's biggest weaknesses.

Actually number 5 is not an issue. Defining macros in the preamble is a custom but you can define macros anywhere.

Have you tried actually writing an article with it? I had very limited success. And since nobody is using it really, you're kind of on your own.

Actually, you can’t specify macros anywhere. Unlike TeX, it’s a real honest-to-goodness programming language with functions and types and modules (yes! It has namespaces!) instead of just macros on macros on macros.

It’s not perfect, they definitely made some interesting choices here and there, but this makes it ~80% less painful than TeX when you’re doing anything other than happy-path undergrad-lab-report writing.

(To be clear, I know you know this! I’m writing this for the benefit of all sentient beings :))

Oh wow, I was hopping something would come along with better friendlier errors like modern programming languages

> 5 bloody files

For those that have to use latex for various reasons, but absolutely hate these files from intermediate compiler passes, here are two aliases from my .bashrc

  latexloop() { latexmk -pdf -pvc -emulate-aux-dir -aux-directory=/tmp/latexcrap "$@"; }

  alias latexmk='latexmk -pdf -emulate-aux-dir -aux-directory=/tmp/latexcrap'

The `latexloop file.tex` invocation is just a helper that hot-reloads when you save the tex file.