LyX ⇒ Announcing TyX - A LyX-like experience rewritten for Typst and the modern era

[noamzaks]

Hey all,

LyX has been prominent throughout the last decade of my life. It is amazing software which let me create math documents very quickly and has always shocked me with the depth of its design, both in source code and user experience.

Recently I have discovered Typst, a new take on a typesetting system. I fell in love with it, and shortly after started pondering about how to develop TyX - a LyX-like experience rewritten for Typst and the modern era.

TyX uses amazing libraries like MathLive, TipTap and Tauri among many others. You can read more about it on https://tyx-editor.com or view the source at https://github.com/tyx-editor/TyX.

I would really love to hear your thoughts on this, your suggestions, anything you have to say and of course your contributions.

Noam

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Noam,

welcome to the forum!

Most of our users work with LaTeX, some with LyX, and we are happy to support LyX users as well, especially when it involves ERT.

TyX sounds interesting. My first understanding is, that it may be a front-end/editor and the backend shall be Typst. When the backend is hidden anyway and doesn't bother the user, I would guess LaTeX would be the more capable backend. I understand that using Typst directly is a very different experience compared to using LaTeX. But what benefit does it have to let Typst run in the background, instead of a pdfLaTeX/XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX? Would TyX have more features or different features that LyX cannot cover with LaTeX because Typst is behind? Or is it like: when you use ERT, it's Typst syntax and that's the benefit?

Stefan

[noamzaks]

Hi Stefan,
Thanks for the reply!

From my perspective, as you say, TyX as a frontend poses several possible benefits over LyX (which some may view as downgrades…) among them:
- Automatic updates by Tauri.
- Be possible to use as a web editor without major struggles.
- Smaller codebase more reliant on robust third-party libraries.

As for the Typst vs. LaTeX backend, I believe Typst can be a good choice for some cases - here are some of the benefits I see:
- Can be easily used by the Rust side of the app, or used as a “sidecar” binary as opposed to LaTeX installation and package management
- Typst might be better suited for incremental compilation as it was built for that; Therefore, having “live preview” should be simpler
- Typst syntax is (arguably) easier to learn and work with

Does this make sense?

In any case, I know this forum is for LaTeX and LyX - looking forward to hearing your perspectives on this

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Noam,

I see that Typst is like combining easier syntax (markdown-like) with a LaTeX-like quality of output with a smaller codebase, and so easier to install and web-friendly. Putting it into the backend omits the syntax/learning benefits while it keeps some limitations compared to full LaTeX. Just other words for my first thought.

But I see that Typst may evolve and get many more capabilities over time. It depends a bit on the commercial success of the company, but having a company behind is also a support in development.

Getting in LaTeX development today is super hard, I guess, seeing the LaTeX3 code and what the team does. A fresh start like Typst can help.

While I wish that LyX would have been better in design and usability (when I tried it a long time ago), and TeXmacs could also have been a thing. For fun, here's LyX on my Blackberry phone in 2016.

lyx-cloud.jpg (203.85 KiB) Viewed 5118 times

I wish TyX (and Typst) great success!

Stefan

[noamzaks]

Wow!