Writer for typst

[jgm]

typst is a new open-source document formatting system (LaTeX alternative) with a lot of nice features. It would be nice to have a pandoc writer for it (maybe a reader too, but at this point a writer would be most useful).

[jgm]

One hurdle is that their math syntax (https://typst.app/docs/reference/math/) is not LaTeX-compatible.
So we'll need a texmath writer as well.

[tim-hilde]

Just stumbled upon typst and I am delighted to find that are planning to have a writer for it

[jgm]

I've made a start on a texmath writer as a first step. Of course, if anyone else wants to help out (especially typst experts), that would be welcome.

[jgm]

I just found out that there's already a custom pandoc reader & writer (partial support): https://github.com/lvignoli/typst-pandoc
We can learn from this.

[jgm]

The typst-writer branch now contains a working typst writer (including math support). It's currently pretty rough and needs a lot of testing and improvement.

[jgm]

A few notes:

• As far as I can see, typst does not support footnotes. I don't know if they plan to add this. We could manually create endnotes if needed. [EDIT: doing that now, until footnotes get implemented.]
• I haven't looked into automatic numbering for tables and figures, but I think this exists.
• I didn't see a way to get row/colspans in tables (but didn't look into it too much). I also didn't look into removing the lines between the cells.
• There isn't a built in definition list syntax, so I defined a function for this, allowing customization. We may want to do the same for horizontal rules and block quotes.
• I didn't see a way to get an internal link with an arbitrary text (not "Section 1"). When I figure out how to do that, I'll need to revise the handling of links with internal anchors as targets.
• I haven't delved into typst's own bibliographic support; they seem to use their own YAML format. We could in principle add conversion from the bib formats pandoc supports.
• typst has citations, but they seem to only allow suffixes, not prefixes, so it will be hard to convert pandoc citations losslessly. We should make the writer sensitive to the citations extension.

[laurmaedje]

Hey, I'm one of the developers of Typst. Very cool that you're working on this! In response to your notes:

• Yes, footnotes are missing. We will definitely add them.
• Automatic figure numbering exists, but there is also an ongoing PR to improve it: [WIP] Make ref use supplment of target element automatically typst/typst#283
• Col/rowspan is indeed also still missing
• There is definition list syntax, but its called terms
• You can create internal links, but it's currently a bit more complicated than it should be. The link function will gain support to directly link to a <label> soon.
• Typst has a custom YAML format, but BibLaTeX is supported too.
• Citations are not particularly customizable right now, unfortunately, but that will improve with time

[jgm]

@laurmaedje thanks for commenting: typst is an exciting project, and I really like a lot of the decisions that went into it. I think my main pain points right now are footnotes, tables, and citations. Glad to hear footnotes are planned.

On citations:

• Currently there is a supplement field. Standard citation systems like biblatex and CSL typically provide three things: a locator (e.g. page or chapter reference, which will be displayed in a way that is determined by the style and localized), a suffix, and a prefix. I'd recommend supporting a similar system in typst.
• Did you consider just using CSL/citeproc for citations? That would give you access to a huge collection of styles. There is already a rust library for this. Does this wheel need reinventing?
• Is there/will there be a way to specify bibliographic data inside a typst file instead of in a separate file?

On tables: Standard typographic practice is not to put lines between all cells of a table. In books, you often only have a line under the header, above the footer, and maybe below the table. (And that's pandoc's default behavior.) Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems there is no way currently to achieve this with typst. You can adjust the stroke property and get thicker or thinner lines, or no lines at all, but is there a way to get a line just below the header, for example?

Does typst have anything equivalent to LaTeX's "floats"? Currently tables seem to break between pages (so they behave like LaTeX longtable, not table which is floating).

[jgm]

On terms: This won't work as a replacement for pandoc (or LaTeX or HTML) definition lists, because they seem to add a colon in displaying the terms. This isn't always desirable; I wonder if it could be made configurable?

[jgm]

One more question @laurmaedje : I was unable to figure out how to specify alignments for table columns (e.g. first column right, second center, third left). Can you point to an example of this?