Observations from this new Typst user

General
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6

Hi Sijo,

Thanks for your elaborate answer. I’ll go over it, one by one, but it might be better to break out the discussion into separate topics. Concerning:

  1. I’ve already answered @maucejo below. I’ll most likely be using your approach, but I strenghtens my belief that Typst markup is not suited for long documents. I would rather have something like <frontmatter>quite a lot of text, multiple chapters</frontmatter> as a functional equivalent to #frontmatter[quite a lot of text, multiple chapters]. There is value in not splitting your document over multiple files, global search and replace for instance. One can of course write something like ] // frontmatter but it feels kind of hacky.
  2. While I much applaud consistency, it’s only consistent from the programmer’s point of view. Having been a teacher, I can assure you that for everybody else it is like grouping a bunch of stuff together in rather inconsistent ways. You can have
#set something (
    some-property: some-value,
    another-property: another-value,
)

#let some-name = {
    let a-thing = another-thing;
    something;
    something else;
    some more things to do;
}

#show some-element: => {
     something
     something else
     some more things to do
}

but not

#set something {
   some-property = some-value;
   another-property = another-value;
}

#let some-name => {
   let a-thing => another-thing,
   something,
   something else,
   some more things to do,
}

#show some-element = {
    something
    something else
    some more things to do
}
  1. Programmatically defining terms look like a really tedious way to write terms. I’ll be using the terms list type for dialogue in a theatrical script, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because / Someone: Are you talking to me? is really handy source formatting.
  2. Brittleness of show rules: I’ve been rewriting the terms list type to make it do what I want. It would really help if I could see how the standard terms list is defined. See also this answer: How to referencing custom numbering for appendicies - #6 by Mc-Zen . The way the entry in the outline is redefined looks like something magic.

Anyway, thanks for your answer!

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