| id: | 1dbc99e0-c327-4a28-94dc-1e020a720cad |
| tags: | writing, resume, tools, markup |
Typst is a modern LaTeX alternative that I recently noticed. I'm generally excited to see new writing tools and markup languages. They're something I use frequently, and people have a lot of good ideas. I decided to give Typst a shot and sat down to convert my resume.
This isn't intended to be a tutorial on Typst. If you want to review the
complete .typ source for my resume as a
reference, it's available
in Git.
♯Table of Contents
♯What was Good?
- The available documentation is excellent. I primarily used the reference section.
- The compiler just worked.
- Symbols were easy.
- So far, I've really enjoyed the tools available for layout control. They have worked like I expected them to, were easily discoverable, and feel less hacky than what I had in LaTeX.
- Error output was always correct.
- While I don't claim to have internalized the syntax and structure, it was easy to work with and consistent. I wasn't taken by surprise at any point.
- I finished in an hour. No show stoppers. I even had editing time.
♯What was Difficult?
- Sometimes error messages were hard to figure out. "Missing bracket" is obvious, but doesn't refer to the line actually missing a braket. That combined with no local completion/highlighting made finding missing brackets a chore.
- I still don't know the correct/idiomatic way to adjust vertical spacing, though I was able to meet my needs using different solutions.
♯Bugs and Strange Behavior
- I didn't notice any overt bugs!
- At one point, the renderer inserted a blank page and I couldn't figure out why. Using a manual page break solved the issue.
- I couldn't use their web editor. It just spun loading my new project forever. I generally prefer local editing anyway, and I'm willing to be quite lenient here as I think they got some traffic from news aggregators.
♯Conclusion
- Typst is worth checking out and evaluating for yourself.
- I will continue to use Typst, to further evaluate it.
- I don't hate LaTeX, but new projects like this are fun.