Jason J.G. White
I'm interested in experimenting with Typst. There's a sample document that I would like to convert to Typst: title, author's name, table of contents, numbered sections, paragraphs and lists are most of the elements.

Is there a template that I should use, similar to the LaTeX article class? I've reviewd Typst templates on GitHub, but I haven't found one suitable for such a basic document.

My plan is to use someone else's typographic design so that I can concentrate on the content, leaving formatting decisions to the designers. As an author who happens to be blind, I find it convenient when someone else takes care of presentational details.

Support for HTML output is available as a "preview" currently, but it is likely to improve in later releases. My intention is to produce both HTML and PDF from the same source. If Typst continues to mature rapidly, I'll probably write research papers in it also.
#Typst #MarkupLanguage
Mar 11, 2025 at 2:31pmWeb
Show threadJeff SonsteinMar 11, 2025

@jason if the docs at https://typst.app/docs/reference/ are to be believed, all the forms of output supported can also be manipulated by Pandoc https://pandoc.org/

Pandoc is friggin' wonnerful for anyone who has to deal with text transformations.

Reference – Typst Documentation

The Typst reference is a systematic and comprehensive guide to the Typst typesetting language.

Typst
Show threadJason J.G. WhiteMar 11, 2025
@jsonstein Yes, Pandoc supports Typst output. What I have in mind, though, is to write Typst markup directly and ultimately to use its in-built HTML output in addition to the typset PDF.

However, if you don't have a TeX installation and you want to generate PDF documents from Markdown, Pandoc and Typst are probably a good combination. I might do this as an intermediary.
Show threadtajpuloMar 11, 2025

@jason Hi Jason!

In order to write a typst document, you need to write a .typ file. I wrote an example file for the requirements, you mentioned.

The document starts now.

#set document(
title: [An example document],
author: "Jason J.G. White"
)

#outline()

= Document
== First section

+ First item
+ Second item
+ Third item

The document has ended now.
The thread continues in my next reply

Show threadtajpuloMar 11, 2025

@jason

I stored this content as file example.typ. Afterwards, I executed the command “typst compile example.typ”. An example.pdf file was generated.

Using a mechanism what #typst calls set and show rules, a designer can customize the design of your document.

This can be done using additional commands before your document content starts or with an #import command at the beginning of your document to include the styling defined in a template from the typst Universe:

https://typst.app/universe/search/?category=text%2Cbook%2Creport%2Cpaper%2Cthesis%2Cpresentation%2Ccv%2Coffice

Search — Typst: Universe

Explore packages and templates to take your documents to the next level.

Typst
Show threadJason J.G. WhiteMar 11, 2025
@tajpulo Thank you. That's so easy... I'll take up the reference manual to fill in details as I learn.
Show threadJason J.G. WhiteMar 11, 2025
@tajpulo I should add that I'm used to LaTeX, in which one needs to load a class file to create even a minimal document. It didn't occur to me that the Typst defaults might produce reasonable output without importing code from elsewhere.
Show threadtajpuloMar 12, 2025
@jason Sure, bad habits were learned 😉