vesti

A transpiler that compiles into LaTeX.

Why need a LaTeX transpiler?

I used to make several documentations using LaTeX (or plainTeX, but TeX is quite cumbersome to write a document, especially very complex tables or put an image, for example). However, its markdown like syntax is not confortable to use it. For example, there is a simple LaTeX document.

% coprime is my custom class. See https://github.com/e0328eric/coprime.
\documentclass[tikz, geometry]{coprime}

\settitle{My First Document}{Sungbae Jeong}{}
\setgeometry{a4paper, margin = 2.5cm}

\begin{document}
\section{Foo}
Hello, World!
\begin{figure}[ht]
    \centering
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \draw (0,0) -- (1,1);
    \end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure}

Upper code is a figure using tikz.

\end{document}

What I am anoying about to use it is \begin and \end block. Is there a way to write much simpler? This question makes me to start this project. Currently, below code is generated into upper LaTeX code using vesti except comments.

% coprime is my custom class. See https://github.com/e0328eric/coprime.
docclass coprime (tikz, geometry)

\settitle{My First Document}{Sungbae Jeong}{}
\setgeometry{a4paper, margin = 2.5cm}

startdoc

\section{Foo}
Hello, World!
useenv figure [ht] {
    \centering
    useenv tikzpicture {
        \draw (0,0) -- (1,1);
    }
}

Upper code is a figure using tikz.

Installation

Vesti can be installed using cargo.

$ cargo install vesti

config file

In default, it uses local pdflatex to compile vesti. If you want to change the default behavior, add config.yaml in $CONFIG_PATH/vesti and type like the following:

engine:
  main:
    "tectonic"

This example defaults vesti to run tectonic backend. (You must download vesti using tectonic-backend to use tectonic). The full list for main engine is in src/commands.rs.

Warning

This language is in beta version, so future break changes can be exist. Beware to use in the large projects.