Every conference has their own required LaTeX style file that must be used. Unless there is an automated way to convert these exactly, I don't see how LaTeX alternatives can be used.
I'm probably showing my bias here, but I'm (respectfully) surprised that, say, poets would want to work in LaTeX :)
I also don't see the need for journals and conferences to make a typst template for exactly these reasons. The templates will have to be community-made and then you still run the risk of having a paper rejected a year from now because the template is outdated.
[0] https://conferences.miccai.org/2025/en/PAPER-SUBMISSION-GUID...
[1] https://github.com/apoorvkh/cvpr-latex-template
[2] https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/formatting-guide
[3] https://www.science.org/content/page/science-information-aut...
Source : wrote my MLaw papers with it.
I never wrote latex before, but writing a simple PDF / scholarly article from code is pretty easy with current tools if you're a dev
I tripped over a lot of abandonware while looking for a free OSS HTML->PDF solution, recently. What do you recommend?
# justfile ── put in repo root set shell := ["bash", "-cu"] # one shell → predictable env, pipe-fail, etc.
# Build a PDF once pdf: tectonic -X compile src-v0.1/main.tex --outdir target/pdf # or swap for typst
# Clean artefacts clean: rm -rf target
# Live-reload while writing watch: cargo watch -q -x 'just pdf'
then i just split the paper in sections like react components but using tex
main.tex
\documentclass{article}
\input{preamble}
\begin{document} \maketitle
\input{sections/abstract}
\input{sections/introduction}
\input{sections/syntax}
\input{sections/evaluation}
\input{sections/conclusion}
\end{document}
LaTeX itself can be easy for simple things (pick a template, and put text in each section). And it can grow into almost anything if you put in enough effort. It is far and away the standard way to write math equations, so if your document has lots of formulas, that's a plus.