Hey people! I want to learn typst, a modern alternative to LaTeX written in Rust.

screenshot

Typst can incrementally compile the files to PDF.

Ironically, there is no incrementally refreshing PDF viewer afaik. So for direct visual output of my progress, I would like the fastest, smoothest PDF viewer.

It can be as small and minimal for that task as possible.

Priorities:

  1. No flicker (no text re-alignment, no disappearing scroll bars, no changing UI)
  2. Fast refresh
  3. Smooth text refresh (maybe with a fade in)
  4. Generally solid

To test:

  • evince / GNOME Document viewer
  • atril
  • mupdf
  • zathura
  • gv

Barebones:

Somehow monitor for changes

  • pipdf (GTK4, but unmaintained)
  • pdf_render (very minimal, maintained)
  • pdf2pwg (needs cargo add and cargo build, only A4 pages which seems totally sufficient)
  • pdf_renderer (security focused, pure Rust, may crash, incomplete)
    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.netOP
      2·
      8 months ago

      Right, forgot about Pulsar. Also have Lapce installed but that may not have the needed tools.

      VSCodium also installed in a Distrobox, but tbh I dont want to use it. It is slow, Electron, Microsoft etc. Just not an option.

      I am currently trying to add syntax highlighting for typst to kate, but I read that XML and damn thats complex.

        • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.netOP
          1·
          8 months ago

          The preview plugin uses Okular, or at least some part of it.

          On Kinoite Okular is no longer installed as system package, and it works well as Flatpak.

          But yes, I should layer Okular again and try, because in my experience the preview had another issue (background follows system theme i.e. dark, causes flickers)