6 ms·

I'm sticking with LaTeX, not as a fetish, but because journal/conferences still do not accept e.g. typst. Will they ever do? I don't know, depends on their wi

I'm sticking with LaTeX, not as a fetish, but because journal/conferences still do not accept e.g. typst. Will they ever do? I don't know, depends on their willingness to integrate it into their toolchains I guess?

Zariff 1y ago
I'm not familiar with how journal submissions work, but don't you simply submit a pdf at the end? Does it matter what engine you used to render it?
- jltsiren 1y ago
  You normally submit a LaTeX or Word document, and the publisher does the final typesetting. Even in computer science, where people often spend a lot of time tweaking the typesetting, the pdf generated by the authors is essentially a preview. There are often visible differences between it and the publisher's version.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Yeah this is one of the craziest things about the scientific publishing industry. Journals justify their fees by claiming its for typesetting, but all they are really doing is adding extra work to nit pick bibliography formats and so on (see the comments in this article about sentence case). Nobody cares about that. I don't think anyone even reads "journals" any more (except maybe Nature/Science etc.). They mostly just read individual papers and then there's no consistency to maintain. In a sane world journals would accept PDFs. They would check that the format roughly matches what they expect but not insist on doing the type setting themselves. Oh well, maybe one day.
    - aragilar 1y ago
      I would note arXiv requires the source as well, and having the source is what is enabling the HTML experiments they're doing. On consistency, what the journals provide is some level of QA (how much is a function of field and journal, rather than the what is charges), and the template is the journal's brand, so both the authors and journals benefit from the style (I can tell the difference between the different (all similar quality) journals in my field at a glance by the style). It's also worth noting that there's a whole much of metadata that needs to be collected (whether you agree with it or not, funders require it), so a PDF isn't going to cut it here either.
    - jonathanstrange 1y ago
      Citation and bibliography guidelines are by far the things that authors neglect the most, and they are absolutely essential to ensure quality. Using PDF as an input format would make editing and typesetting practically impossible. Not that I haven't seen volumes where publishers did that but the results are abysmal and in my experience that only occurred with local "grey literature" like really crappy conference proceedings edited in an institute.
      - IshKebab 1y ago
        > Using PDF as an input format would make editing and typesetting practically impossible. But they don't do any editing or typesetting. They say "use our template" and "the author's second initial needs to be italic in citations". That's my whole point.
    - colejohnson66 1y ago
      > Journals justify their fees by claiming its for typesetting [..] Because they used to actually be doing that. Historically, science journals were pay-to-play because the journal had to typeset your document and print it. But with the advent of computers, they had to pivot while still retaining their revenue streams.
- aragilar 1y ago
  Not only do you need to use LaTeX, but you need to use the journal's class file. Anything else will get rejected.
thezoq2 1y ago
That is for sure my biggest concern with typst. I wrote a tool that can convert from typst to latex for final submissions, but it is a bit sketchy and at the moment won't handle math very well. https://gitlab.com/theZoq2/ttt https://gitlab.com/theZoq2/ttt
Paapaa 1y ago
There are already at least two publishers which accept Typst. So that "ever" part is already covered. But most still don't accept Typst and LaTeX is usually mandatory if the sources are required.
- tcfhgj 1y ago
  which ones?
  - xkevio 1y ago
    IJIMAI (https://typst.app/blog/2025/typst-at-ijimai https://typst.app/blog/2025/typst-at-ijimai) and JUTI (https://forum.typst.app/t/juti-call-for-papers-best-paper-award-100-usd/3820 https://forum.typst.app/t/juti-call-for-papers-best-paper-aw...). Admittedly, not the most renowned or most known journals but you have to start somewhere.
ykonstant 1y ago
I sincerely doubt they will: most journals in pure math still do not accept LuaTeX; just think about that.
- Rendello 1y ago
  It makes sense. LaTeX fetishists tend to be sadomasochists.
dimatura 1y ago
Yeah, that was my first thought. And it's not just about them accepting typst, but also whether they would provide a template using typst, like they currently do for latex. Using the conference/journal template to write the article saves a lot of time for both submitters and editors (who have to deal with hundreds, if not thousands of submissions).

Zariff 1y ago

I'm not familiar with how journal submissions work, but don't you simply submit a pdf at the end? Does it matter what engine you used to render it?

jltsiren 1y ago
You normally submit a LaTeX or Word document, and the publisher does the final typesetting. Even in computer science, where people often spend a lot of time tweaking the typesetting, the pdf generated by the authors is essentially a preview. There are often visible differences between it and the publisher's version.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Yeah this is one of the craziest things about the scientific publishing industry. Journals justify their fees by claiming its for typesetting, but all they are really doing is adding extra work to nit pick bibliography formats and so on (see the comments in this article about sentence case). Nobody cares about that. I don't think anyone even reads "journals" any more (except maybe Nature/Science etc.). They mostly just read individual papers and then there's no consistency to maintain. In a sane world journals would accept PDFs. They would check that the format roughly matches what they expect but not insist on doing the type setting themselves. Oh well, maybe one day.
  - aragilar 1y ago
    I would note arXiv requires the source as well, and having the source is what is enabling the HTML experiments they're doing. On consistency, what the journals provide is some level of QA (how much is a function of field and journal, rather than the what is charges), and the template is the journal's brand, so both the authors and journals benefit from the style (I can tell the difference between the different (all similar quality) journals in my field at a glance by the style). It's also worth noting that there's a whole much of metadata that needs to be collected (whether you agree with it or not, funders require it), so a PDF isn't going to cut it here either.
  - jonathanstrange 1y ago
    Citation and bibliography guidelines are by far the things that authors neglect the most, and they are absolutely essential to ensure quality. Using PDF as an input format would make editing and typesetting practically impossible. Not that I haven't seen volumes where publishers did that but the results are abysmal and in my experience that only occurred with local "grey literature" like really crappy conference proceedings edited in an institute.
    - IshKebab 1y ago
      > Using PDF as an input format would make editing and typesetting practically impossible. But they don't do any editing or typesetting. They say "use our template" and "the author's second initial needs to be italic in citations". That's my whole point.
  - colejohnson66 1y ago
    > Journals justify their fees by claiming its for typesetting [..] Because they used to actually be doing that. Historically, science journals were pay-to-play because the journal had to typeset your document and print it. But with the advent of computers, they had to pivot while still retaining their revenue streams.
aragilar 1y ago
Not only do you need to use LaTeX, but you need to use the journal's class file. Anything else will get rejected.

thezoq2 1y ago

That is for sure my biggest concern with typst. I wrote a tool that can convert from typst to latex for final submissions, but it is a bit sketchy and at the moment won't handle math very well. https://gitlab.com/theZoq2/ttt https://gitlab.com/theZoq2/ttt

Paapaa 1y ago

There are already at least two publishers which accept Typst. So that "ever" part is already covered. But most still don't accept Typst and LaTeX is usually mandatory if the sources are required.

tcfhgj 1y ago
which ones?
- xkevio 1y ago
  IJIMAI (https://typst.app/blog/2025/typst-at-ijimai https://typst.app/blog/2025/typst-at-ijimai) and JUTI (https://forum.typst.app/t/juti-call-for-papers-best-paper-award-100-usd/3820 https://forum.typst.app/t/juti-call-for-papers-best-paper-aw...). Admittedly, not the most renowned or most known journals but you have to start somewhere.

ykonstant 1y ago

I sincerely doubt they will: most journals in pure math still do not accept LuaTeX; just think about that.

Rendello 1y ago
It makes sense. LaTeX fetishists tend to be sadomasochists.

dimatura 1y ago

Yeah, that was my first thought. And it's not just about them accepting typst, but also whether they would provide a template using typst, like they currently do for latex. Using the conference/journal template to write the article saves a lot of time for both submitters and editors (who have to deal with hundreds, if not thousands of submissions).