I figure I should also mention that my LaTeX alternative is called Typst. We do not have much public detail yet but there is a landing page [1] to sign up for more info and beta access as soon as it becomes available.
[1]: https://typst.app/
[1]: https://typst.app/
To give some context, I'm a professor in theoretical computer science, so I write a lot of LaTeX documents and notes.
Some observations of my work flow.
- Writing: I'm writing the source, and occasionally look at the output. So as long as the output time is reasonable, then it is sufficient.
- Editing: I'm reading the output, and then edit the source. So going from the output to the part of the source I have to edit should be as smooth as possible.
- Typesetting is the least of my concern. I only check if there are any glaring typesetting problems right before we publish. This takes at most 1% of the total time in preparing a document.
- Live editing almost never happen. But I see why it might be useful to incorporate it into the work flow. (A cursor on the rending of the live editing would be very nice)
Typst went with the 2 panel design, with one side source, one side rendering. So I found something close to WYSIWYG is better for editing. However, full WYSIWYG is hard to get right and comes with its own problem. Currently I found there are a few common things people do with respect to source/rendering.
- WYSIWYG editors, which renders everything (word, TeXmacs, Lyx). Editing is done in the rendering. It is smooth, but takes a long time to get used to.
- The app Typora that renders everything except the part where you are editing (which shows as the source). This can be generalized to render all except the current line, or something similar. Editing is done in the source, but feels like I'm editing in the rendering. This is extremely smooth for my editing work, and is my preferred way.
- The app like Compositor https://compositorapp.com/ that renders everything, but can call out the selected part of the source.
- The source and render are in two different panels. Editing is done in the source. So usually one can click part of the rendering, and cursor jumps to the corresponding part of the source. This introduce some friction, as the eyes have to do a jump, and also a quick context switch.• SwiftLaTeX (https://github.com/SwiftLaTeX/SwiftLaTeX / https://www.swiftlatex.com / https://doi.org/10.1145/3209280.3209522 — the cool demo that used to be on their site seems to be gone, but see HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710105)
• Texpad https://www.texpad.com/
• BaKoMa TeX (http://www.bakoma-tex.com/) — its eponymous author Basil K. Malyshev passed away recently, but the product and page still exists for now
• VorTeX (see Pehong Chen's PhD thesis from 1988 https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1988/CSD-88-436... — it actually discusses the issues of quiescence, etc).