Open source LaTeX book first release
Open source LaTeX book first release
Better design, new features and readme.
... and this is the most popular open source LaTeX book on github ❤️
I love how the Oreilly books became the gold standard for covers for this sort of thing.
There are a lot of typos in this book. Are you looking for someone to proofread? Great work btw
thanks, will correct all typos asap
Sure, the docx file is online if you want to help.
Great! I forgot that Latex was on my mental list of things to learn/look into, so now I can add it on my actual written list, and bookmark this page.
Wooow, thank you!
Hope they can get into the latex3 programming stuff as well!
You guys should also check out Typst https://typst.app/. It is a lot easier than LaTeX even though not as powerful. It has meaningful error messages making the debugging a lot more user friendly.
I had been using LaTeX at work and decided to give Typst a try:
I installed the compiler and vscode extensions to run Typst natively.
Setting up my orgs template in Typst was significantly easier then LaTeX and took about 20% less lines of code.
I like the more modern, practical syntax for writing docs.
It's still a relatively young project though, so I found a few rough edges:
- Paragraph indentation rules for my language weren't available: managed to find a workaround though
- Only allows use of relative paths for images, imports etc: apparently for security reasons, forces me to have template logo in almost every folder
- Localized dates: Typst can't do it
- No \graphicspath like command: LaTeX will search for an image by filename in each specified folder, in order. Typst has no equivalent command (yet)
Overall I was positively impressed, but went back to LaTeX mostly because of the last two points. Curious to see how Typst will be in a few years!
Under every single LaTeX themed post there is someone suggesting typst. Why use something open, if you can use something proprietary? /s
The compiler is open source: https://github.com/typst/typst
And maybe because LaTeX is a pain to work and debug? So please don't tell me that you have never been frustrated with it.
The Typst compiler is available under the Apache License 2.0.
The web app at https://typst.app is proprietary but also completely optional. You can use Typst with only a text editor supporting the LSP (VSCodium, Kate, Atom, ...), typst-lsp (Apache-2.0 OR MIT) and the Typst compiler.
Why can’t I find any information about pricing on that page?
Because it's free for the time being.
What's an "open source" book? You don't compile a book, aren't they all "open source"? Do they list all the sources for their text or something?
Well yes, but also no. You can't reproduce a book because that violates copyrights.
Open source in this context just means that nobody owns the book, you can reproduce it however many times you want, and distribute it where you want as long as you include the original license in the reproduction (MIT license).
Also, there's a bit of a colloquial understanding that others are able to contribute or fork the original source material.
I mean, it's called "LaTeX by example", so there's a pretty good chance it's written in LaTeX, which you do indeed compile to get the PDF or whatever output you want.
Also, just having access to the source doesn't make it open source - that requires more freedoms. For example, here's GitLab Enterprise Edition source code, fully functional and ready to be used. And also officially described as the proprietary edition of GitLab by the GitLab company itself. Why? Because its license pretty much boils down to "you can use this only for testing and development, unless you have paid for it".