[HN Gopher] Tectonic - A modern, complete, self-contained Tex en... ___________________________________________________________________ Tectonic - A modern, complete, self-contained Tex engine with Unicode support Author : Gadiguibou Score : 38 points Date : 2023-03-27 12:10 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (tectonic-typesetting.github.io) (TXT) w3m dump (tectonic-typesetting.github.io) | weinzierl wrote: | I used it a bit recently and it is brilliant. Instead of lugging | a huge TeX installation around you have a single reasonably sized | binary. When you run 'tectonic file.tex' it will download | everything it needs on the fly. If you want to run it without | internet access you can sort of freeze the downloaded files and | run tectonic with your *.tex plus the frozen bundle. | | It also claims reasonable error messages but I only ran it on | error-free files, so I cannot tell. | | One small downside is that in my direct comparison with lualatex | it was always marginally slower. | | Another one is that it is not a rewrite but still based on the | old TeX code. | | I think tectonic is a great project but generally speaking I find | it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% compatible LaTeX | with a modern codebase. And that is not even because the old code | is bad - not at all. It's just that a pure Rust or Java | implementation would make it so much easier to integrate into | other projects. An audited TeX core we could run on untrusted | input would be another benefit. | | Which brings me to my last point: When researching tectonic I | found a fork that attempted a pure Rust port and it _nearly_ | worked with examples. There is hope...* | lejalv wrote: | Not really what you asked for -- but there is an interactive | modern typesetter that is programmable and works on trees. It's | called TeXmacs - you may want to check out what it can do -- | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46ON2FB30U | nsajko wrote: | > I find it quite disappointing that we do not have 100% | compatible LaTeX with a modern codebase | | That would be a huge effort. Your time would be better spent | designing and creating a _new_ typesetting system. | convolvatron wrote: | I've been looking at https://typst.app | | not tex based, but uses CM fonts. I really think that trying to | update the programming parts of TeX is necessary. sadly I'm | struggling with fonts in svg figures. | | but to suddenly see applying effort in this area and getting | real traction is treat. so many thanks for the luminaries that | put up the last one, but maybe its time for some rework after | 40 years. | nsajko wrote: | Sadly it still doesn't support vector graphics. A TeX-killer | must also include a replacement for something like PGF, Tikz, | Metapost, etc. | nsajko wrote: | It's a TeX distro that only supports the XeTeX engine. A far cry | from "modern", as XeTeX is an abandoned engine that always had | quirky compatibility problems. | | And it's not "self-contained" either if it downloads packages | from the Internet. | jjgreen wrote: | Written in Rust! Can you tell? curl --proto | '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://drop-sh.fullyjustified.net | sh | digdugdirk wrote: | As a non-Rust person, mind explaining the comment to a | layperson? | cryptonector wrote: | I believe u/jjgreen is complaining about the curl|bash | pattern being used in a Rust codebase. | red_trumpet wrote: | I think it's worth mentioning that the install line at | https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install looks exactly the | same. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-28 23:00 UTC)