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Comment by Archelaos | Hacker News Reader

I am using a LaTeX pipeline for creating text, invoices, forms, etc. from snippets stored in a database. It was quite complicated to set up, but the results are very satisfying. In principle, I would like an easier markup language, but am afraid to wast my time trying out something new, just to run into limitations after awhile.

Here are my most important requirements: Multiple columns configurable for meaningful column and page breaks (minimum number of lines in a new column or page). Reliable automatic hyphenation for multiple languages (at least English and German, perhaps French, Italian and Spanish in the future). Pictures in columns with dynamic placing according to the available space. Complex tables and forms with sensible automatic page breaks. Background images. Different areas on the page which are treated like mini-pages. -- Is Typst capable of all that?

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Now, this isn't really an alternative, but I can recommend using pandoc instead of pure LaTex. Personally, I think text blocks are much easier to handle and read in markdown and pandoc allows you to use in-line LaTex wherever markdown is insufficient, without making basic text styling unnecessarily verbose. In my opinion, the result is a better/friendlier LaTex, or limitless markdown respectively. Especially for writing papers and such, you can always start actually writing in basic markdown, which is trivial and almost-WYSIWYG, and later worry about presentation. In my experience, with pure LaTex you easily get lost in sidequests and it's much harder to get into a writing flow and find your way around your own words in the editor.

I wrote my dissertation this way. As long as you’re already comfortable with latex, it’s amazing. Huge time saver not to have to write latex formatting when you don’t have to, but an equally huge time saver to be able to control formatting when you need it.

It's a bit of a weird thing, really. I think, I have not seen any comprehensive, basic tutorial on the matter. I presume a lot of people who've become victim of the LaTex bug, but dislike its overhead, independently found bliss in this pandoc compromise. It's definitely a bit of coping with LaTex Stockholm syndrome, you probably need a specific set of experiences, know some struggle to fully appreciate it.

If anyone here hasn't messed with it, but thinks "I wonder, if LaTex could ruin my life, too", I suggest to start learning pandoc first (it can do various markup conversions, it's useful by itself). Get familiar with pandoc metadata headers on a RTFM basis. A LaTex intro is all you need after that, if you are up for a bit of trial and error. Or learn LaTex first, but not both at the same time, as the layered processing involved is a bit confusing (e.g. pandoc showing pdflatex errors). In any case, I strongly advice to bite the bullet and install the full LaTex package of your distro (no idea about macOS, or windows), as fighting dependencies is suuuper annoying. However, the trade-off is it's truly a behemoth, consequently frequent upgrades for a lot of packages you don't ever use. (I configured dnf to download upgrades automatically, so I can do a quick `dnf upgrade --cacheonly` when opportune.)

Speaking of... I wish pandoc could do Tex package management and dependency resolution.

I ended up just downloading the texlive image and letting it go slightly stale while I wrote. Latex plays poorly with OS package managers and I decided I preferred to be out of date.

I made each chapter a separate file and compiled each one to latex. I had a top level latex file that did an \include{} for each chapter, and a big old Makefile to tie everything together, including figure generation.

All this, and it was still easier than writing every latex command by hand.

If you're going to do this, might as well go with AsciiDoc instead. It's vastly superior as a syntax. Markdown breaks down at the mere mention of something as trivial as a nested list item containing a table of blockquotes.

Not that it couldn’t be trivial in the abstract, but I’m struggling to imagine a use for a nested list item containing a table of blockquotes. It doesn’t seem at all surprising that a tool wouldn’t anticipate that.

Things from the design world, like Acceptance Criteria would happily require it.

Is a lightweight easy-to-read plain text markup language the right tool for that job?

Absolutely! The writers are generally not highly technically experienced, but have to produce highly technical documents that need to be regularly reviewed and changed for years at a time.

If you're going to do this, why not generate Pandoc ASTs directly? You can do so from a number of languages and they support (by definition) a superset of any given markup's features, with blocks to call out directly for things you can only do in Latex.

I assume the original question is asking about programmatic document generation, in which case working with a real AST is probably also a productivity and reliability win as well.

I haven't done pictures in columns but the rest should be doable.

I've migrated my invoicing (and all my other publishing/slides) to typst from latex and couldn't be more happy.

I think so!

I've not tried a couple of things you mention (e.g. background images) but e.g. for dynamic placing there are libraries like https://typst.app/universe/package/meander

The core of Typst is a pretty featureful well-thought-out FP language. This makes expressing libraries for any piece of functionality very pleasant.

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