[necovek]

References in established systems like LaTeX work the way they do for a reason: you don't want to embed words in them (like "Figure" or "Section") automatically because it does not work across languages.

Eg. both the article and docs at https://typst.app/docs/reference/model/ref/ use an inline reference that wouldn't work in Serbian.

Serbian (and many other languages) have suffix declensions, so while "Figure 4" is "Slika 4", when used like "in Figure 4", you really need "u Slici 4" (and lowercase, really) instead of "u Slika 4" as produced by Typst.

On the plus side, it seems to use OTF locl tables for substitution glyphs for language, though it only partially works for Serbian (might be due to bad locl tables for LinLibertine which seems to be the default font).

I am sure it's not too hard to only get the reference number (eg. @foo.context.something?), but defaults should be good or maybe per-language?

I can see how they wanted to avoid authors having to hard-code the reference type if they change eg. something from an image to a table, but it's hard to make it smart enough for any language.

[cbolton]

Hopefully they'll improve the reference system and multilingual support. But if you want a simple number for a reference, you can call "ref(<label>, supplement: none)", or if you want this to be the default for the @label shorthand syntax you can set it globally with "#set ref(supplement: none)".

Also typst knows the type of the referenced element. It's easy to write more elaborate rules that behave differently depending on the type. And the rules can also check the current language to generate localized references.

[qhwudbebd]

I played with this briefly, and saw that supplement can also take a function, which presumable how you make @wibble return '(34)' instead of 'Equation 34'? The function is passed the equation itself, so supplement: x => x makes the reference identical to the whole equation (!), but it wasn't obvious to me how to extract just the equation number from an equation x?

This is a really common idiom in mathematical writing: "from (1) we see that..." instead of "from Equation 1 we see that". (Randomly capitalising 'Equation' here is another controversial implication of using a fixed word string as a supplement.)

[cbolton]

I would just define `#let eqref(target) = "(" + ref(target, supplement: none) + ")"` and then use it as in "from #eqref(<eq-xy>) we see that..".

You can probably do that with a function given as supplement but it looks a bit involved, I think you'd have to do something like in this example: https://typst.app/docs/reference/model/ref/#customization

(I think the reference system is an area where things can be improved to main some common use cases simpler.)

[qhwudbebd]

Agreed it could be improved fairly easily at this early stage, and even documenting 'standard recipes' would help. But I do think as a default, prefacing with a fixed string with fixed capitalisation is probably the wrong choice vs earlier systems which simply insert the reference number/letter itself and allow the user to word things correctly around that. Trying to make it do the right thing in context in a way that generalises across multiple languages is unnecessarily hard.

[teo_zero]

Embedding words like Figure or Section breaks not only declensions, but capitalization, too. Germans won't notice it because all their nouns are capitalized, and English speakers won't care because they're traditionally forgiving with unmotivated upper-case words in the middle of a sentence (including titles). But formally it shoud be "Figure 4" in the caption and "as we see in figure 4" in the reference.

[4bpp]

"as we see in figure 4" is simply incorrect, though; expressions such as "Figure 4" or "3rd Street" are treated as proper names and must be capitalised, as would the non-nominal "third" in "Dritte Straße" if any German-speaking city were to have American-style numbered streets.

[necovek]

Those two cases seem completely distinct: do you have a source for the claim that labeling stuff in documents with type and number makes those labels proper names?

For addresses, that's usually listen in a language grammar as a rule.

[darrensharm]

Use `\usepackage{cleveref}` and then `\cref` in LaTeX. Also works with babel.

[devit]

Surely it could just insert the proper form depending on context? (with language-specific code of course)

[necovek]

That's what ChatGPT sometimes struggles to do correctly for Serbia : the rules are tricky and depend on the surrounding text. Eg. if you want to say "In figures 4 and 5", you are already struggling (even in English).

So even embedding latest LLM won't solve it so it's better to leave it to the author to do the right thing.

[bboygravity]

Why would a user who types only in English prefer a system that was optimized for all languages?

[phoe-krk]

If Typst aims for eventually competing with LaTeX, getting outside the bubble of "everyone uses English" is a very good step to take. And it's good to take it early, when your system architecture is still easy to change and not implicitly ossified around englishisms.

Things like "if you ever want to translate your document from English to XXX, you will also need to port it from Typst to LaTeX" tend to be dealbreakers.

[monista]

Typst authors being germans, one can hardly accuse them in the "everyone uses English" attitude. Typst `dif` math operator (as in dx/dt) produces upright 'd', quite unexpected to ones used to slanted 'd' tradition.

[teo_zero]

> Typst authors being germans, one can hardly accuse them in the "everyone uses English" attitude.

On the other hand, one can easily understand why, bein German, they assume Figure, Equation, etc. will always be capitalized.

> Typst `dif` math operator (as in dx/dt) produces upright 'd', quite unexpected to ones used to slanted 'd' tradition.

I would indeed expect an upright 'd'. It's an operator, not a variable. I don't recognize the tradition you're mentioning.

[monista]

> I would indeed expect an upright 'd'. It's an operator, not a variable. I don't recognize the tradition you're mentioning.

That's strange. I've never seen a math article in English with upright 'd' differential, only have seen it in German and Spanich articles. It's also math italic in TeX (you can check Knuth's TeXbook).

[superb_dev]

It’s better for all of us if we can collaborate with a common system. This tool will have to deal with other languages if it’s gets popular enough