Hey people! I want to learn typst, a modern alternative to LaTeX written in Rust.
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.
- Firefox loads too slow
- Okular fast (thanks for the tips guys), just flickering scrollbar and background icon
It can be as small and minimal for that task as possible.
Priorities:
- No flicker (no text re-alignment, no disappearing scroll bars, no changing UI)
- Fast refresh
- Smooth text refresh (maybe with a fade in)
- 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 addandcargo build, only A4 pages which seems totally sufficient) - pdf_renderer (security focused, pure Rust, may crash, incomplete)
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.
apparently there is a preview plugin for kate https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/kate/kate-application-plugin-preview.html , it's already preinstalled. It works with markdown files, I guess if someone would be down, he could extend the plugin to work with typst
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)