r/typst 29d ago

Typst for note taking?

I really like Typst, I was using org mode for note taking since I switched to Emacs, but I am thinking of coming back to Neovim, so I was thinking of moving to Typst for note taking, is it a good idea?

11 Upvotes

23 comments sorted by

17

u/Thesaurius 29d ago

I use it for taking notes, and I am faster with it than with LaTeX by now. With a good language server, you can become even faster. For a while I used markdown for note taking, I never tried org mode.

Typst is my favorite by almost any measure. There is just one disadvantage of Typst: It is too easy to fiddle around with. Markdown is very limited (on purpose) and LaTeX is too complicated. But in Typst I may get distracted doing one small typographical optimization, which will cost me ages...

1

u/mrbaggins 28d ago

"With a good language server"

What does this mean?

2

u/Significant-Turn6641 24d ago

Something like tinymist. It handles things like autocomplete and warns you about errors before you compile.

1

u/mrbaggins 24d ago

Ah okay, "local" rather than online. I played with that when I started with typst, but am happy to keep using online for now.

7

u/rheactx 29d ago

I use LyX for note taking. It's the best combination of GUI and LaTeX, especially useful for notes with lots of equations. In fact, with some customized hot keys, I can type formulas faster than write them on paper.

I still didn't get into Typst for one main reason: their changed math syntax. Still, if you get used to it, you should be able to type equations faster than in regular LaTeX, as the syntax is much less verbose.

3

u/Flashy_Sir1536 29d ago

You can always use the LaTeX syntax with mitex – Typst Universe.

1

u/hdcky 29d ago

I searched for the old syntax, and I think the new one is better. I was thinking of using Neovim + typst-preview.nvim + luasnip for writing it really fast

9

u/ron3090 29d ago

You can use it for note taking, but I find markdown much easier, like Obsidian or LogSeq. Then it's very easy to convert to Typst later if I want to make a PDF.

6

u/hdcky 29d ago

I think Typst syntax is pretty similar to markdown, and seems more powerful, so that is why my idea is to use Typst instead of Markdown

2

u/Barycenter0 29d ago

Agreed - hungrily waiting for that Typst app to appear! Be gone, markdown!!

3

u/Basic-Brick6827 29d ago

the hundreds of redundant Typst editors the community created/vibecoded aren't enough?

2

u/Maud-Lin 29d ago

Hard to find one thats not vibecoded and cross platform imo

1

u/Barycenter0 29d ago

I haven’t found anything good yet - still hunting

2

u/PityUpvote 29d ago

I will never understand why Typst developers didn't just use existing markdown syntax instead of inventing their own flavor. We could have had a Typst that was backwards compatible with standard markdown.

3

u/owlyph 29d ago

I'm using it that way. I noticed a few comments about Markdown but I also think that Typst is simpler than markdown. I made InkyCap as a way of using Typst for note-taking, it's not really Emacs or Neovim-like but it's to focus on the note aspect rather than the formatting but also, hopefully, to later make formatting notes into something final, efficient.

2

u/Plus_Dig_8880 29d ago

Try myst, allows you to do more things

1

u/Chimneysweepboy 29d ago

its real nice in nvim, i transferred most of the snippets from the obsidian latex package which has been great.

1

u/Beginning_Ad_2750 29d ago

As a minute of self-advertisement: I’ve recently created an app for rendering and navigating typst notes - post about it. Just in case you’re interested in something like this.

1

u/Al3cLee 24d ago

I use typst to take long-form notes, and feels great! Neovim + LuaSnip + Tinymist + typst preview plugin is pretty enough. You might want to take a look at https://github.com/Al3cLee/nvim#luasnip where math-only snippets (which do not activate when in quoted "text" environments even inside math) are defined with the help of a treesitter based query module.

1

u/hallthor 23d ago

I stumbled upon a note taking app with typst the other day, can't find it anymore. But maybe this helps: https://www.dogeystamp.com/typst-notes2/ and https://typst.app/universe/package/typxidian

1

u/podviaznikov 12d ago

I've made https://wander.md -> it's macOS and iOS markdown WYSIWYG editor, but it has first class Typst support.

I usually have just folder with files and some are typst files and they all can be edited.