- Free document maker Typst now gives each book chapter its own reference list.
- Typst now supports variable fonts, which hold many styles in one file.
- Typst can make web pages with real math too, as a test feature.
- Journals that want the files a paper was written in rarely accept Typst.
Typst, a free program that turns typed text into finished papers, books and slides, got a new version in June. It can now give each chapter of a book its own list of references. Typst is often seen as an eventual replacement for LaTeX, a program many people use to write math-heavy papers. Lee Phillips reviewed it for the site LWN and calls its progress impressive.
Typst works with variable fonts now too. Traditional fonts come as a set of files, one for bold, one for italic and so on. A variable font can hold many styles in one file, and a writer can set the weight anywhere in the range that font supports.
Typst can make web pages, but that's still a test feature you have to switch on. The new version writes math so almost all current web browsers can show it by themselves, with no pictures of equations needed. On Phillips's desktop, his test equation looked essentially the same on the web as in Typst's PDF.
A reader on the tech forum Hacker News said the equation looked bad on their Android phone, and it did on Phillips's phone too. Another reader spotted the cause, and Phillips agreed. His desktop had Latin Modern, the font that gives LaTeX papers their look, but his phone didn't. He says authors who put math online this way should offer that font for download or tell readers to get it.
Hacker News discussion of review
One Typst file can now make several documents at once, like a small website plus a PDF, all linked to each other. That's still a test feature as well. Typst can now make one PDF that meets several standards at once, like rules for long-term archiving and rules that help people with disabilities read it.
Some journals ask for the files a paper was written in, not just the finished PDF. Very few of them accept Typst files, so writers sending work there still need LaTeX, Word or another format. Phillips thinks that's unlikely to change before Typst reaches version 1.0. Until then, updates could still force big changes to people's documents.
