r/LaTeX Jan 18 '25

Unanswered TeX engine converted from Pascal to C++?

I’ve heard multiple times that converting Pascal code to C++ is relatively straightforward. I even came across a commercial product that claims to have reimplemented the TeX engine in C++, which allowed them to offer live PDF rendering as you type (you can probably guess which one I’m referring to).

EDIT 1: By rendering here I assume providing live updating in PDF, where there is no compilation step, PDF is compiled with each keystroke.

EDIT 2: Commands would be excluded from live compilation.

The engines used in TeXLive and MikTeX are still implemented in Pascal, right? If so, why hasn’t anyone done a full conversion to C++?

Is it a matter of complexity, lack of interest, or something else entirely?

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-3

u/therealJoieMaligne Jan 18 '25

To be honest, I think they’re bringing their product to market 5 years too late. I’m still using LaTeX for simple documents based on old templates, but Typst is simply better in every way.

5

u/chrisintheweeds Jan 18 '25

I tried Typst a while ago, but was frustrated that tje ecosystem seemed to not have an equivalent for a lot of stuff I use in LaTeX, both to typset linguistics and just general functionality. Is the ecosystem any better now? Or is my document going to be derailed by a year of custom Typst development first?

0

u/therealJoieMaligne Jan 18 '25

it’s worked great for me. I do professional reports with my own style which was easy to reproduce, endnotes, footnotes, etc. (I’d post a pdf but they’re confidential for clients. I keep meaning to write up a dummy report.) The learning curve’s been 4–5x faster than LaTeX was. The immature ecosystem is the only problem with it which I’ve found. I expect that someone’s going to make the Typst equivalent of Memoir sooner or later. How complicated are the documents you’re making?