Top all-time · #4273
Laurenz's Blog
Personal blog · laurmaedje.github.io/postsprogrammingsystems
Laurenz's Blog is a personal blog at laurmaedje.github.io about programming and systems. Since 2022, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “How to Put 30 Languages into 1.1MB”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Laurenz's posts for comparisons of Typst with TeX, including the layout algorithm, hyphenation, and math mode, plus a memoization write-up. Comments cite them as sources rather than judging them.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Blog about my coding projects.
Most-linked posts?
- How to Put 30 Languages into 1.1MB6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-07-23
- TeX and Typst: Layout Models (2024)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-02-13
- What If LaTeX Had Instant Preview?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-10-15
- Evolving Typst2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-03
- Typst's Math Mode Problem2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-27
What Hacker News says?
I am also not a fan of automatic fraction. BTW, I notice that both of your complaints will be addressed in the next version: https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6672 https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/6442 , see also https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/math-mode-problem/
Comment linking /posts/math-mode-problem/
on “Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement”Submitted TeX and Typst: Layout Models (2024) as a story · 240 points
HN discussionNo, they are not using the same algorithm: https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/layout-models/
Comment linking /posts/layout-models/
on “Typst 0.13 is out now”Submitted Typst's Math Mode Problem as a story · 124 points
HN discussionAfter reading Laurenz's blog post on TeX vs Typst layout [1], it made me wonder: how hard would it be at this point for them to make Typst directly understand TeX, and let you insert chunks of TeX. It would make for a really nice upgrade path. Of course, being bug-for-bug compatible once people layer on tons of TeX packages seems like a losing game. But if most straightforward TeX stuff "just worked", it would be an…
Comment linking /posts/layout-models/
on “Typst 0.13 is out now”Submitted What If LaTeX Had Instant Preview? as a story · 43 points
HN discussionFor those interested in typst, Laurenz wrote[0] about the differences between the typst and TeX layout algorithms a while ago. The paragraph layout algorithm is the same but the way it interacts with page placement is quite different. [0]: https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/layout-models/
Comment linking /posts/layout-models/
on “Manual: Spaces”Submitted Writing an Incremental Typesetting Engine as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhat do you think of this post by Typst's primary contributor? https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/layout-models/ Do you think it is sufficiently respectful of TeX/LaTeX? As far as proponents go, I will echo the sentiments of many people who have actually used both TeX and Typst: I have been able to accomplish many things in Typst within an hour or two by writing my own Typst code, that in LaTeX I could only accompli…
Comment linking /posts/layout-models/
on “TeX Live 2025 Released”Submitted Embedding TeX Hyphenation Patterns for 30 Languages in a 1.1 MB Rust Automaton as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTypst handles hyphenation very similarly to TeX. https://github.com/typst/hypher https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/hypher/
Comment linking /posts/hypher/
on “I rewrote my CV in Typst and I'll never look back”Submitted Evolving Typst as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wonder how this compares to comemo [1] [2], they're both memoization frameworks with "tricks" to limit invalidation. The trick in comemo's blog post is to make the dependencies fine-grained, by tracking and only comparing what parts of them are actually used; while the trick here is to have functions depend on other outputs instead of the root input, so changes don't propagate all the way (+ laziness). But I'm sur…
Comment linking /posts/comemo/
on “Durable Incrementality”Submitted How To Put 30 Languages Into 1.1MB – hypher, a fast hyphenation library for Rust as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evolving Typst as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Put 30 Languages into 1.1MB as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Put 30 Languages into 1.1MB as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Put 30 Languages into 1.1MB as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Conversations with JJ as a story · 1 points
HN discussion