| I think LaTeX set out to be a decent typesetter (in the sense if the profession) for books.
With human typesetting already becoming a rare profession LaTeX turned out to be the better typesetter for almost everyone in the 90s. Also InDesign came along and fulfilled that promise well for the other half of the market that had money but no inclination to work the WYSIWYM way. This lead to LaTeX' big success in the academic world. I think typst can't hold a candle to any of the two when it comes to the previous flagship
discipline of setting narrow columns of fully justified and hyphenated[1] text utilizing microtypography to equalize the grey value. I do not know what the plans for typst are, but I think it will
have a niche even if it will
never come to par with LaTeX and InDesign. Their capabilities are a thing for old style physical books and not even for what we call books now.
Full justification is as dead as narrow columns and hyphenation. 30 years of web changed our reading habits. What we think of books now is mostly meant to be readable on a screen. I also think scientific papers should adapt to that fact. Of course without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Being able to share papers as self-contained files is a big plus and high quality math typesetting is a must.
Columnar and fully justified serif text on the other hand is just baggage. If typst can be the accessible tool for scientific publication that'd be fantastic. If it gains enough legacy features to
replace LaTeX completely even better. [1] Especially when it comes to languages with long words and complicated hyphenation rules like German. P.S. Unironically always enjoyed TeX and LaTeX. Enjoy typst too, just not as a full (La)TeX replacement (yet). |