Post #1452823

2026-04-20 17:53 UTC

There is a new brand of software that is really awful. Myst, jupyter-book, typst are three such representatives. Half-made pieces of software with annoying self-advertising on a flashy web site, the documentation is written in a &quot;happy useless tone&quot;, and just overall irritating. An example: I am using jupyter-book for my lecture notes. Version 2 turns out to be just a warpper around Myst. Myst claims to be able to generate PDF, for which it translates Markdown to typst. Except it cannot even translate `\land` and `\lor` correctly. No documentation, nothing. Oh yeah, no page numbers in the PDF either, again super-difficult to find out how to get them. So thank you, I will continue to use LaTeX.

Replies (5)

@andrejbauer@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-21 14:26

So after some suffering it turns out that the main culprit is jupter-book version 2, which has nothing to do with version 1. Someone has a sick sense of humor when it comes to naming software. Reverting back to version 1 made life much easier (and also non-dependent on typst).

Open ##2130918
@yforster@types.pl 2026-04-20 17:59

@andrejbauer did you try to take a screenshot of your problem and give it to Claude code to fix?

Open ##2130919
@ionchy@types.pl 2026-04-20 18:01

@andrejbauer Typst catching strays out here by association lol I don't think there's anything inherently Typst's fault here just as if Myst had very poorly generated LaTeX

Open ##2130920
@MartinEscardo@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-20 19:48

@andrejbauer writes "So thank you, I will continue to use LaTeX." And so will I until Typist gets to actually replace LaTeX, if that ever happens. I don't have anything against progress. But I am going to use Typist only after it passes the test of time. And I am not going to be a Guinea pig in this experiment, simply because LaTeX does its job for me. I don't have any incentive to switch to anything else at the moment. I know how LaTeX works, and it works rather well.

Open ##2130925
@dif@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-22 10:00

@andrejbauer there used to be a time on the internet, where having a well-designed and well-maintained website was at least a signal of serious intent. now it is so easy and quick to make a web 2.0 flashy website that it has an opposite effect to me

Open ##2130926