Installing and Using Typst

Typst is a modern, markup-based typesetting system designed as a faster and simpler alternative to LaTeX. It allows you to write documents using a concise syntax and compiles them directly to PDF, without the need for intermediate formats. Developed in Rust, Typst emphasizes speed, ease of use, and powerful features for creating high-quality documents like papers, reports, and presentations. We use Typst to create customer facing documents.

Since we work with Rust, we thought it would make more sense to compile it from source, becoming more confident and knowleadble about the technology. To do that, we did the following:

1. Installed OpenSSL: One of Typst's dependencies need OpenSSL to compile, so we need to start with it:

   $ sudo apt update
   $ sudo apt install openssl
   $ sudo apt install libssl-dev
   $ openssl version
   $ which openssl

2. Setted environment variables:

   $ export OPENSSL_DIR=/usr/bin/openssl
   $ export OPENSSL_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/openssl
   $ export OPENSSL_LIB_DIR=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

3. Installed using Cargo:

   $ cargo install --locked typst-cli

It takes sometime to compile, but once it is done, the command typst becomes available in the console:

$ typst document.typ

To upgrade Typst, just compile it again, using the --forge argument:

$ cargo install --force --locked typst-cli

It replaces the executable located at ~/.cargo/bin. To remove it, simply delete the typst file located at this folder.