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. [1.1]
References
- Type: Webpage. Title: “typst/typst”. Publisher: “GitHub”. Published (Modified): 2026-03-16T09:39:55.000Z. Accessed: 2025-03-18T08:55Z. URI: https://github.com/typst/typst.
- Type: File. Title: “README.md”.
- Type: Text. Location: ¶1.
- Type: File. Title: “README.md”.
the compilation speed boost and package size reduction are enough to make me salivate lol cant wait to try this out. anyone made nvim plugin for it tho?
More than one it seems:
https://forum.typst.app/t/tinymist-vs-typst-vim-vs-typst-preview-nvim/1775/7
How does Typst compare to something like Asciidoc ? I haven’t found many editors with typst support unfortunately
It’s not the same use case. Asciidoc is closer to markdown/org/reST, i.e., simple markup languages, whereas Typst also emphasizes on presentation (layouting, element positioning, creation of complex figures, etc.). You can reproduce features from Asciidoc in Typst using scripting.
As for editors, aside from the official webapp, and the community LSP (tinymist), there aren’t that many available.
Thanks for explaining. It seems like I had a completely different understanding/exoectation of what typst is.
[…] I haven’t found many editors with typst support unfortunately
I’m not sure what you mean — I personally just write it in VS Code [1], and then compile it locally [2].
References
- Type: Website. Title: “Visual Studio Code”. Publisher: “Visual Studio Code”. Accessed: 2026-03-19T08:56Z. Location (URI): https://code.visualstudio.com/.
- Type: Webpage. Title: “typst/typst”. Publisher: “GitHub”. Published (Modified): 2026-03-18T10:04:07.000Z. Accessed: 2026-03-19T08:59Z. Location (URI): https://github.com/typst/typst.
I love typst but I don’t use it. Academic journal templates are all latex, so I can’t use it for my primary use case.
From my limited journal submission experience, some at least just want a PDF. They’ll re-set the thing anyway.
Unfortunately not for most physics journals. Initial can be a PDF, but subsequent needs latex sources.
I’d say it still have a long way to go, especially for advanced use cases
If you just want to have a quick pdf generator, it’s definitely the right tool.
One thing that’s way better is the scripting. In LaTeX it’s just an afterthought, simply exposing its convoluted core. In Typst, it feels way more like a first class feature.
I’d say it still have a long way to go, especially for advanced use cases […]
What do you think it’s still lacking?
Maths feels like a first class citizen in latex. The syntax is ugly, but there is some logic through the legacy jank.
Typst makes fundamental design decisions that render it unsuitable beyond extremely simply equations. In LaTeX, curly braces are nearly always reserved for enclosing arguments, to avoid confusion with actual brackets.
Typst uses normal brackets for both its scripting and actual maths.
For example,
\frac{n(n+1)}{2}in latex turns into(n(n + 1)) / 2in typst. The typst code is incredibly unclear - the first set of brackets with the slash together actually form the fraction operator, so neither end up visible.You can see how this would start to struggle even with high school level maths, with bracketed terms and possibly fractional terms in exponents, integrals, etc.
For example, it is very difficult for me to work out the difference between the following three in typst. That is specifically not what you want from a typesetting language.
1/2(x + y) 1/x(x + y) 1/2^x(x + y)LaTeX ignores whitespace, so you can just use a formatter to space out your code and ensure the curly braces. This is not even an option in typst, which uses the space as an escape character.
Update (2026-03-20T00:37Z): @Meron35@lemmy.world, it has since been found that Typst is aware of this inconsistency [7].
[…] You can see how this would start to struggle even with high school level maths, with bracketed terms and possibly fractional terms in exponents, integrals, etc.
For example, it is very difficult for me to work out the difference between the following three in typst. That is specifically not what you want from a typesetting language.
1/2(x + y) 1/x(x + y) 1/2^x(x + y)[…]
I think these are valid complaints. For clarity, this is the output that I found for each:
[1]
[2]
[3]
I was surprised by the second; I expected it to produce
[6]. I didn’t know what to expect for the third.I tried searching through the documentation [4], but I was unable to find any information that exactly defined expressions [5], and how they are grouped within the fraction when juxtaposed like in your examples.
References
- Type: Anecdote. Published: 2026-03-19T07:20Z.
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echo "#set page(width: auto, height: auto, margin: 0pt); $ 1/2(x + y) $" | typst compile - o.png
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- Type: Anecdote. Published: 2026-03-19T07:20Z.
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echo "#set page(width: auto, height: auto, margin: 0pt); $ 1/x(x + y) $" | typst compile - o.png
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- Type: Anecdote. Published: 2026-03-19T07:20Z.
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echo "#set page(width: auto, height: auto, margin: 0pt); $ 1/2^x(x + y) $" | typst compile - o.png
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- Type: Webpage. Title: “typst Documentation”. Publisher: “Typst”. Accessed: 2026-03-19T07:25Z. URI: https://typst.app/docs/.
- Type: Text. Publisher: [Type: Webpage. Publisher: “Typst”. Title: “frac”. URI: https://typst.app/docs/reference/math/frac/.]. Accessed: 2026-03-19T07:26Z. Location: §“Syntax”.
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[…] Use a slash to turn neighbouring expressions into a fraction. […]
- The quote mentions that the components within the fraction are called expressions.
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- Type: Anecdote. Published: 2026-03-19T07:39Z.
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echo "#set page(width: auto, height: auto, margin: 0pt); $ 1/x (x + y) $" | typst compile - o.png
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- Type: Comment. Author: “laurmaedje”. Publisher: [Type: Post. Title: “Inconsistencies/ambiguities with expression grouping with fractions.” (“#8002”). Author: “K4LCIFER”. Publisher: [“Github”>“typst/typst”]. Published: 2026-03-19T07:07:44.000Z. Location (URI): https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/8002#issue-4099792220.]. Published: 2026-03-19T14:41:47.000Z. Accessed: 2026-03-29T00:45Z. Location (URI): https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/8002#issuecomment-4090630691.
The ability to load custom fonts comes to mind. I remember when I was converting my document from TeX to Typst was that I wasn’t able to just specify my .ttf file path.
For easy pdfs, use markdown with a typst backend
[…] use markdown with a typst backend
How could one do that?
Typst syntax is already simple enough. Why add an unnecessary layer of abstraction
This actually looks good. Though at this point I get annoyed at anything that doesn’t make an effort to be compatible with Markdown - idk if there’s any good reason they chose
#as the symbol for introducing code lines, but surely it makes sense with the ubiquity of markdown to make that start a header. Similarly with*for emphasis and whatnot.But it genuinely looks like a good effort to dispense with the backslashes and braces of LaTeX yet retain a coherent and comprehensive mathematical output.
What is surprising is that it doesn’t appear to ultimately just call through to TeX. That probably means it has a chance of having good error handling and decent performance… I will have to give it a try.
“As powerful as LaTeX” is a huge claim. How strong is this claim?
Edit: The claim is that it is designed to be as powerful as LaTeX, not that it presently is. Does it reach its goal?
Some journals and conferences are starting to accept Typst.
Personally, the huge difference with LaTeX is that if I want to do something slightly complex that is not covered by a third-party plugin, I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty and script it myself, whereas in LaTeX, I dread writing macros that do more than being notations/shorthands.
I’ve used both and while Typst is very impressive and usable, it still has not reached feature parity with LaTeX. That being said, there are some aspects to Typst that are either do not exist in LaTeX or are extremely user unfriendly. Tables for instance, are very easy to import into Typst and can be done directly from a CSV file. I’ve also personally taken advantage of the YAML import feature to automatically generate appendices from notes that could not reasonably fit into a table. I’ve definitely had my fair share of experiences wrestling with Typst to do things that are trivial in LaTeX but overall I have a good experience with it. I use it for some report writing at work (and I use a latex-like report template) and so far prefer it to LaTeX. I suggest you try it out and see if it works for you.
I’ve been meaning to learn LaTeX but never got around to it. I write documents in markdown and convert to PDF, but would like to have some rich typesetting.
For anyone who has ever used both, would you recommend learning this or LaTeX for non-academic use case?
As someone who used LaTeX for many years and then switched over to Typst, I see no reason to use LaTeX these days. Typst syntax is more readable and it is much nicer to write.
Especially if you’re coming from markdown, I think Typst is the better choice. Typst syntax is very similar to markdown for the simple things and more advanced things are like any super high level programming language.
Typst is way simpler to learn, especially if you’re used to markdown. You can first approach it as a markup language like markdown, but with some scripting.
Package management in LaTeX is infuriatingly bad, you can’t even specify the version you want to use.
I can only speak for myself but I like Typst a lot more than LaTeX. Typst compiles instantly and the markup language is very reasonable. LaTeX by comparison is slow and arcane, with a macro language that is unlike anything else in common use today. It also has pretty awful defaults to be honest, especially if you’re writing in a language that isn’t English. There are a few things that Typst can’t quite do, but that gap is shrinking as well.
Edit: This blog post has some examples and showcases a lot of the core functionality, including the scripting. Typst has a playground which you can use to get a feel for the basics (though installing it locally isn’t a massive pain either, unlike LaTeX). Overleaf allows trying LaTeX in the browser for free as well, although only with an account (partly because LaTeX tooling is a pain and expensive in CPU resources).
I’ve used Typst a good bit for both fully private stuff and for uni shenanigans and can say that it has fully replaced Latex for me (when I have a choice, I have managed to convince a few others too). The main thing that won me over was the compilation speed, but the more I’ve used it the more natural it feels compared to Latex. It’s modern by default (you can really just use it with no preamble and it’s sane enough), and the ability to write a mostly normal programming language is just amazing. I’ve produced plenty of simple plots fully within Typst for example, and things like
show-rules are genuine innovation. It’s of course not perfect, but at this point a good number of these are just additional packages that could be written.It might have a better UX than LaTeX but by design it also has the same double-edge sword feature - if you want or need to do something that is not covered by the default styles you have to rely on 3rd party plugins. That’s just fine for academic papers and such but not when you need a custom style.
Imho ConTeXt still is the king on that side. Though I wish it had the same development pace and documentation as LaTeX’s - or at least as Typst’s
