[gucci-on-fleek]

TeX [0] is in some sense "the one true layout system", but it's designed for printed documents, so it doesn't work on the web [1]. And in some ways, it's much simpler than CSS (you can build nearly everything from only a dozen typesetting primitives or so), but in other ways it's much more complex (since TeX is itself a fairly complex programming language). It's typesetting quality is still unbeaten by any of its competitors though, even 50 years after its first release.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX

[1]: But it does work on WEB :) [2]

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(programming_system)

[srdjanr]

My understanding is that it's designed for fixed-size documents? There's a big difference between a layout system for that, and one where size of a document can vary wildly, up to completely opposite aspect ratios

[gucci-on-fleek]

I guess I'd call it mostly fixed: most TeX engines only produce a single page size at a time, but you generally only need to modify a single variable to change the page size and, after recompiling the document should be perfectly reflowed into the new page size. This is not helpful at all for someone who wants to be able to freely rotate their phone, but it's still better than InDesign or Word where changing the page size will probably break the layout.

There is actually a TeX extension that supports viewers arbitrarily changing the page size of documents [0], but it's fairly new, and as far as I'm aware it has essentially zero adoption.

[0]: https://ctan.org/pkg/hitex

[hexasquid]

I'm not sure if Tex has a way to express mobile/desktop aware layouts, or to enable the reader to adjust only the font size (my ignorance)

[gucci-on-fleek]

Yup, you're correct that TeX can't really handle arbitrary page sizes; see my reply [0] to a sibling comment.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487199