TYPST: A new markup + page layout engine to take on LaTeX

[nontroppo]

@ptram

The one I tried was the simplest one (a title, a body text). But now I understand what could have been wrong: I presumed that the source markdown file had to be in Pandoc markdown syntax. Apparently, it has to be in the Typst syntax.

No, your new presumption is wrong, the old one was fine!

The ideal workflow:

1. The text in Scrivener should use Scrivener’s styles and Section Types, so emphasis for italic etc. and use appropriate Section Types.
2. Then you compile to Pandoc markdown.
3. Scrivener compiler makes a Pandoc MD file.
4. The pandoc command is: pandoc -f markdown -t typst -o out.pdf in.md – this command can be done in the post-processing pane of the compiler or you can run it yourself in Terminal…
5. You will get a PDF next to the MD file. See above for the sample I made direct from Scrivener.

I attached a working Scrivener project that demonstrates how to do this above. I have an Apple Silicon Mac so my homebrew is /opt/homebrew/bin so if you have an Intel you’ll need to change the post-processing commands. But that project demonstrates what you need.

We can build from that, as we can use Styles or Section Types to inject the formatting markup for e.g. one/two columns, fonts etc. So that just as for Quarto compile formats, we can do detailed layout using Scrivener’s editing features… The limits for this workflow will be reached when we bump up to Typst limitations or the fact Pandoc may not fully support all typst features…

@ptram

EDIT: Or, maybe I should tell the compile format, in Scrivener, that it should use Typst for conversion? Writing it in the document’s configuration head is not enough, even for Quarto?

Just to clarify: Quarto may not support Typst properly yet, so using Quarto instead of Pandoc adds lots of additional complexity, just stick to pandoc for the moment. Again open my project and see exactly what is done there…