> Besides the typst packages, it also lacks the editor packages. I am an emacs user…
The typst editor plugin for vscode is pretty great. It gives you a split view of source & pdf, and you can cmd+click on either side to scroll to the corresponding source / rendered output. It also does things like give you autocomplete on fields from externally referenced json data.
Obviously, that might be no help if you’re married to eMacs. But if you’re a little promiscuous with editors like I am, give it a try.
I don't know which of the several typists plugins are you talking about, but they all seem decent, but years from achieving the features auctex has.
Just to say, the most important features:
Well, the feature you mentioned of clicking the PDF and redirecting to the source.
Preview in the same buffer (window) as the code
It uses other regexps to recognize the enabled packages, and then adds the package's macros and environments to its list, so with a command you can open an environment or macro, and it recognizes which packages you are using, if you are in a math environment, etc. and shows only the ones you can use in the context. It's like a super-intelligent set of macros.
AucTex has also great support for bibtex/biblatex, and glossary/glossaries, both for using the macros and for compiling.
Automatic, intelligent, labeling.
And a lot more (altough this is probably the biggest latex package, there are a lot of other smaller packages that are also extremely useful) . Maybe it's not the hardest package to do, but it needs a lot of people and time to replicate, basically what typst is also lacking, for now.
The current actively-developed VSCode extension is Tinymist. Its workflow is great and addresses all your issues (to the extent they are even relevant to Typst):
> Well, the feature you mentioned of clicking the PDF and redirecting to the source.
Tinymist does this. Click on text and it redirects the document buffer to the corresponding source text.
> Preview in the same buffer (window) as the code
Tinymist previews in a separate tab for side-by-side real-time writing with a preview.
> It uses other regexps to recognize the enabled packages, and then adds the package's macros and environments to its list, so with a command you can open an environment or macro, and it recognizes which packages you are using, if you are in a math environment, etc. and shows only the ones you can use in the context. It's like a super-intelligent set of macros.
This sounds like an artifact of Tex. The standard Typst library is very thorough. And for everything else, Typst has automatic retrieval of community packages. Just add an #import and it just works:
#import "@preview/example:0.1.0": add
#add(2, 7)
> AucTex has also great support for bibtex/biblatex, and glossary/glossaries, both for using the macros and for compiling.
This just works with Typst in-the-box for bibliographies, and with the glossarium package for glossaries (just add with: #import "@preview/glossarium:0.4.2": *). But one thing a Typst IDE like Tinymist or the web service adds to the writing environment is an autocomplete for labels and citations. Just start typing the reference and get autocomplete options.
> Automatic, intelligent, labeling.
Not sure what this means, but you can add a label to headings, figures, etc. and quickly reference them with @label, and the current IDEs
It seems good, and there's an emacs version, altough simpler than auctex.
Not having the preview in the code buffer, isn't a dealbreaker, especially when typst is so fast, but it's still a useful feature.
The part of the packages I wasn't talking about a tex feature but an emacs one. When you import a package, it'll usually add environments or macros (in typst i believe they are called commands). Emacs would recognize thay you imported a package and with a shortcut you are able to quickly insert a command without writing it manually (because that's too much time... Like a template) It also recognizes the document type for inserting sections, and whether you are or not inside a math environment.
Albeit, looking a bit more in typst I think it's as mandatory as in latex. Commands tend to be simpler and shorter, especially sections. So maybe it wouldn't impact as hard as I had thought.
For references, using bib files, it would be almost as good as latex.
The auto labeling is useful for align envs or itemizes. AucTeX adds a label to each item or equation automatically. Again, not a dealbreaker, but would be great.
Reading a bit more, it seems that typst is a bit more different that what I had thought. I will not switch till cetz is more mature or I find another alternative.
Maybe I'll remake my Cv in typst just to try it out (+ my cv is horrible)
With typst you can get autocomplete for symbols imported from packages or defined locally. And your bibliography can use the same .bib files as latex if you want to. I’m pretty sure the typst editor plugins also know which mode you’re in and give you different autocomplete suggestions depending on the mode. But yeah, it’s probably still not quite as mature. But it is, in my opinion, much better designed.
What features do you want from cetz that you think are missing?
(And yeah making something with it is a good idea. You’ll get much more of a sense of it by playing around with it.)
I've been using it a bit and it works very well, altough it's hard to get used to its way to define ”environments”. About cetz, I miss mainly circuits. There's a plugin, but's years behind circuitikz or its alternatives. I haven't tried it yet, so I can't tell if the support for mindmaps, trees, etc. is as good.
Yeah I think its fair to say latex has a much more mature ecosystem. And we should expect nothing less from something made in 1985. Its almost 40 years old.
But typst is catching up as fast as it can. I find it very usable already.
Yeah, my guess is that it'll fall on either side of the same go/c vs c++/rust "simple rules with more implicit rules in your head" vs "complex tool with less in your head" divide in people's opinion.
I think it’s more like latex is like c++ and typst is like zig. C++ & latex have been worked on for decades, and has all this design baggage it carries around. An ugly macro system, weird “compile it 3 times” things. But it also has decades of work filling out the 3rd party package ecosystem and decades of stackoverflow questions and answers.
Zig & typst are rewrites from scratch with new ideas. The core is better designed, since they have been able to learn from what came before and have a do over. But they’re missing the decades of incremental work fixing bugs and filling out the ecosystem. So, yeah, I’m sure the eMacs plugin is worse for typst and latex. It’s all just … newer.
The typst editor plugin for vscode is pretty great. It gives you a split view of source & pdf, and you can cmd+click on either side to scroll to the corresponding source / rendered output. It also does things like give you autocomplete on fields from externally referenced json data.
Obviously, that might be no help if you’re married to eMacs. But if you’re a little promiscuous with editors like I am, give it a try.