I've been really happy with it; I've been using it for templating reports at work for months now. I've just started experimenting with using jinja to pretemplate my template lol.
I'll probably continue down that track to try and automate my workflow away so I can focus on less tedious things, but after you get used to the box encapsulation it becomes fairly easy to work with!
Without having tried typst myself, I would still recommend learning LaTeX, if you’re ever looking to publish in a scientific journal; most journals accept submissions in either Word (which in my mind is a very painful tool to use, especially when it comes to typesetting and equations) or LaTeX. They then typically convert the input to some internal format, but are probably unlikely to add support for new formats.
If you only ever intend to write documents for your own purposes, use whichever format you like the best; I personally use Emacs Org-mode and LaTeX export.
I want to use it, but if I’m going to commit to learning a new system for my work, I need to know that 1) it will remain open source (like LaTeX), 2) its going to remain maintained, 3) it has a robust package library, 4) it has to understand bibtex. I dont think typst has committed to the first, its not mature enough for 2 or 3, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to automate translation between bibtex and their funky format.
To the people who switched to it from latex for technical documents (involving equations), how much adjustment did it need? I’m in the process of writing some papers/presentations and I’m fairly comfortable with latex but sometimes I do wish it was simpler
It’s much easier to get started than latex if assuming no previous knowledge of either, to the point I can actually recommend it to people in humanities and non-STEM in general. Syntax-wise it’s very different, so you’ll need to get used to it and look up the docs. I’ve been writing latex for ~5y before Typst and I think Typst’s documentation is FAR better than any latex source I came across: no messing with random outdated packages that are incompatible with your template’s, and don’t get me started on that bibtex/biblatex hellhole.
In Typst, most error messages are actually useful to describe the issue; you won’t waste time setting up your local build if you want to typeset offline; and the output is generated FAST - pretty much as you type it - which helps a lot with learning what works and what doesn’t.
The downside is that because it’s not as popular yet, it’s harder to find that magic stack overflow answer that solves your problem. So if you’re in a hurry with a deadline approaching, go with latex and practice some Typst on the side.
I’ve used it for a few documents and loved it. There’s a learning curve, but I’m glad they’re not carrying the technical debt latex has, so it’s definitely worth the effort IMO.
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