[HN Gopher] Tectonic - A modern, complete, self-contained Tex en...
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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.
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(page generated 2023-03-28 23:00 UTC)