It's a monolithic kernel with a relatively sane collection of "setup" macros that, by and large, can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do.
If you're curious about how to build TeX from scratch, have a look at my TeX.SE answer:
> It's a monolithic kernel with a relatively sane collection of "setup" macros that, by and large, can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do.
I don't know what constitutes "sane", but I literally just downloaded and installed it right now because you mentioned it, and it choked on a trivial hello world:
$ mtxrunjit --script context doc.tex
...
> tex error on line 1 in file doc.tex: ! Undefined control sequence
...
1 >> \documentclass{article}
2 \begin{document}Hello, world\end{document}
...which might explain why it goes unmentioned?
I feel like this is gonna be a tougher sell than you expect. How the heck is a user expected to switch to ConTeXt?
I wonder what's the status of LaTeX 3[1][2]. Also, it would be nice to have an automation in the style of Tectonic[3][4] (which looks like a dead project itself) out of the box.
Seems like an admirable project but they’re building on creaky foundations. Even the way TexLive is released feels like something from academia than a real piece of software.
Sometimes bugs appear only if you load three specific packages in a specific order. The fact that there are no namespaces and every package can modify everything makes it a complete nightmare. LaTeX would do well to take a hint from the lessons we learned in the past 40 years. Or just retire it and push something sane forward, like Typst.
After quite some time, and actually after reading this post[0], I took another look at GNU Texmacs, this time with a little more depth and patience. And indeed, the program is an incredibly powerful tool for creating beautiful documents. I'm also currently on a roll where I'm reappreciating the philosophical advantages of WYSIWYG. Anyway, for me it's definitely an insider tip for anyone who is annoyed by LaTeX and is open enough to try WYSWYG.
I recently had good luck writing a paper in org-mode. The .tex export has been around forever but I never really played with it - unlike other Emacs users, I don't actually use org-mode that much.
But in the end, it worked surprisingly well. Mind you, I didn't have anything too fancy in there, so that made the task very easy. But it was a good workflow:
- Write org-mode text in left buffer.
- Have Emacs issue a .tex export on save.
- Have the document automatically compile when .tex files are newer than the .pdf file
- Have the right buffer show and automatically reload the pdf file.
That made it so I could just write stuff in the left buffer and on save, the pdf in the right buffer would update and reflect the last changes. I found that a quite pleasant setup.
I've also started using typst for some projects.
I am slowly getting used to the syntax. But it's a process for me.
I also still have latex projects/docs
Worth noting that LLMs are very bad at writing cetz code, even if you try to feed them all the docs. I had to use TiKZ and import the resulting PDFs for some of the more complex illustrations in my thesis.
I've recently made a dozen vastly different projects with Typst, ALL of which would have created dependency hell, syntax noise, and hours of extra pointless work in Latex. It's such a clear win at this point it's embarrassing.
I mean, LyX has met my needs since 2019 - I don't particularly need to be optimistic about it. I was even able to bring in parts of my old LaTeX preamble with me, especially some utility macros. It was a pretty painless switch with immediate benefit.
(I've done everything in it from write honors theses and format CVs.)
I've been interested in Typst. But I don't really have a general "document processing" tool, but multiple specialized ones, and given Typst's current jack of all trades/master of none status, I'm not sure what it'll replace. I use Quarto for a lot of my statistical computing, LyX if I need to do a lot of finicky math typesetting (e.g. if I need to break out \qquad), and Word - god forbid - for my non-technical collaborators.
After delivering my thesis in LaTeX, I never bothered with it again, even at CERN back in 2003 most folks were using a mixture of Word and FrameMaker, with templates to have a TeX like paper output.
If you’re installing this on a fresh machine, the network installer is usually the smoother option. The full ISO is great if you’re setting up multiple systems or need an offline install, but for most people the net install saves some headaches.
SwiftLatex, TexLyre and StellarLatex seem to be exactly this. Apparently this is something a lot of people want to see in the world, awesome stuff. I wonder what's the performance like between native XeLaTex and these wasm version and if it will be Overleaf's demise if these solutions can be easily self-hosted by organizations without worrying about the server getting bogged down by compile jobs.
Personally I use LaTeX for anything I have to write as pdf, I understand many critics but... So far is The Tool to makes good typesetting. PostScript can do nearly the same at a harder effort for the user, Typist can't match, others are just LaTeX wrappers or can't deliver anything decent.
The problem is that today we have a massive gap in development: there was a time when high-quality FLOSS development existed, followed by an era of resting on one's laurels while creating very little, mostly just stuff built on top of existing systems in an attempt to simplify things, which only resulted in making them more complex and fragile, with zero innovation.
Today, we have generations of developers who simply don't know classic FLOSS tools beyond the surface level and lack the technical background to create new ones that aren't dependent on the tech giants. This is because obsolete universities have de facto trained legions of big tech labourers rather than autonomous technicians capable of standing on their own two feet.
The issue is that there was never a real desire to give "the power of computing" to end users. Consequently, at the first opportunity, the desktop was undermined and rejected to keep everyone dependent on someone else's services. Now, young developers don't know how to evolve back towards the desktop, even though they sense, without fully understanding, that this is the right way forward.
We are losing decades of potential evolution with repercussions for centuries to come, just to feed a handful of people who profit from others' ignorance.
So, while it's true that on one hand we have excellent tools that are obsolete, clunky, and difficult to integrate today, it's also true that on the other hand we have a void. This is because the foundations of modern software are flawed and unsustainable, created solely for the interests of Big Tech. Either we move past this or we head for ruin, as has been happening for some time now; eventually, it will be impossible to carry on and we'll have to start again from scratch, with enormous costs, delays, and damage.
https://wiki.contextgarden.net/
It's a monolithic kernel with a relatively sane collection of "setup" macros that, by and large, can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do.
If you're curious about how to build TeX from scratch, have a look at my TeX.SE answer:
https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/576314/2148
I'd imagine making a FOSS port in Rust that has non-cryptic error messages wouldn't be a multi-year project using modern GPTs.
> It's a monolithic kernel with a relatively sane collection of "setup" macros that, by and large, can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do.
I don't know what constitutes "sane", but I literally just downloaded and installed it right now because you mentioned it, and it choked on a trivial hello world:
...which might explain why it goes unmentioned?I feel like this is gonna be a tougher sell than you expect. How the heck is a user expected to switch to ConTeXt?
You can find a "hello world" here: https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Document_layout_and_layers/Tu...
[1] https://www.latex-project.org/latex3/
[2] https://github.com/latex3/latex3
[3] http://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/
[4] https://github.com/tectonic-typesetting/tectonic/
Sometimes bugs appear only if you load three specific packages in a specific order. The fact that there are no namespaces and every package can modify everything makes it a complete nightmare. LaTeX would do well to take a hint from the lessons we learned in the past 40 years. Or just retire it and push something sane forward, like Typst.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152982
But in the end, it worked surprisingly well. Mind you, I didn't have anything too fancy in there, so that made the task very easy. But it was a good workflow:
That made it so I could just write stuff in the left buffer and on save, the pdf in the right buffer would update and reflect the last changes. I found that a quite pleasant setup.So happy to see new texlive as well
(I've done everything in it from write honors theses and format CVs.)
I've been interested in Typst. But I don't really have a general "document processing" tool, but multiple specialized ones, and given Typst's current jack of all trades/master of none status, I'm not sure what it'll replace. I use Quarto for a lot of my statistical computing, LyX if I need to do a lot of finicky math typesetting (e.g. if I need to break out \qquad), and Word - god forbid - for my non-technical collaborators.
If I had to use LaTeX, I'd definitely do it via LyX.
The system is flexible and simple.
Used TeX for the same and had to lose sanity for it to even work semi well.
https://www.swiftlatex.com/
https://arxtect.github.io/StellarLatexLanding
https://texlyre.github.io/
The problem is that today we have a massive gap in development: there was a time when high-quality FLOSS development existed, followed by an era of resting on one's laurels while creating very little, mostly just stuff built on top of existing systems in an attempt to simplify things, which only resulted in making them more complex and fragile, with zero innovation.
Today, we have generations of developers who simply don't know classic FLOSS tools beyond the surface level and lack the technical background to create new ones that aren't dependent on the tech giants. This is because obsolete universities have de facto trained legions of big tech labourers rather than autonomous technicians capable of standing on their own two feet.
The issue is that there was never a real desire to give "the power of computing" to end users. Consequently, at the first opportunity, the desktop was undermined and rejected to keep everyone dependent on someone else's services. Now, young developers don't know how to evolve back towards the desktop, even though they sense, without fully understanding, that this is the right way forward.
We are losing decades of potential evolution with repercussions for centuries to come, just to feed a handful of people who profit from others' ignorance.
So, while it's true that on one hand we have excellent tools that are obsolete, clunky, and difficult to integrate today, it's also true that on the other hand we have a void. This is because the foundations of modern software are flawed and unsustainable, created solely for the interests of Big Tech. Either we move past this or we head for ruin, as has been happening for some time now; eventually, it will be impossible to carry on and we'll have to start again from scratch, with enormous costs, delays, and damage.