Typst

What is Typst?

Typst is a modern, fast, and expressive typesetting system designed for scientific and technical writing. Created as a next-generation alternative to LaTeX, Typst brings together beautiful typography, a clean declarative syntax, and full programmability—all with instant preview and reproducible builds.

At a glance, Typst is:

  • Fast and interactive — instant rendering, live preview, no compilation delays
  • Easy to learn — clean, markdown-like syntax with intuitive layout rules
  • Programmable — functions, variables, conditional logic, and reusable components
  • Perfect for scientific writing — equations, figures, citations, cross-references, bibliographies
  • Reproducible & portable — lightweight files, deterministic rendering, excellent integration with version control
  • Modern and open — open-source, actively developed, and built for today’s research workflows
  • Flexible — templates, custom styles, academic layouts, posters, reports, manuscripts

Typst provides the precision of LaTeX with the readability of Markdown—making high-quality scientific documents easier, faster, and more reproducible.

Why Typst?

Traditional scientific writing tools often create friction: LaTeX can be overly complex, Word is hard to version control, and PDF exports often break reproducibility. Typst solves these issues by providing a modern, unified, and researcher-friendly writing platform.

Typst is valuable because it offers:

  • A gentle learning curve — write immediately; extend only when needed
  • Clean, readable syntax for collaboration — ideal for teams, students, and reproducible teaching materials
  • Beautiful default typography — professional results without wrestling with packages
  • Reliable citations & references — integrates seamlessly with Zotero / Better BibTeX
  • Transparent document structure — no hidden formatting, no brittle copy-paste styles
  • Ease of sharing & archiving — plain-text .typ documents work perfectly with Git and Zenodo
  • Integration with Quarto, GitHub, and modern workflows — perfect for dynamic documents, reproducible pipelines, or scientific publishing

In short, Typst gives you professional-quality documents without LaTeX’s complexity and without Word’s unpredictability, making it ideal for open and reproducible research.

Exercise: Create a Simple Typst Document

Goal: Learn how to create and compile a basic Typst file.

Instructions:

  1. Install Typst or use typst.app (browser version).

  2. Create a new file: main.typ

  3. Work through the “Writing in Typst” tutorial: https://typst.app/docs/tutorial/writing-in-typst/

  4. Render the document using the Typst compiler or online preview.

Outcome: You have created a fully functioning Typst document.

Exercise: Use Zotero / BBT with Typst

Goal: Connect your reference manager to Typst.

Instructions:

  1. Export your Zotero library (Better BibTeX → references.bib).

  2. In your main.typ, add:

    #bibliography("references.bib")

  3. Cite an entry e.g. @smith2020, @doe2023

  4. Render the document and verify the bibliography at the end.

Outcome: You can now cite literature reliably and reproducibly within Typst.

Further Reading

Slides