The SILE author's FOSDEM 2015 talk introducing SILE, a TeX-inspired typesetting system with frame-based layout, Unicode, OpenType and a Lua-based extensible design.
Why Hacker News points people here: Pointed to as the standard introduction to SILE as a modern TeX alternative, though possibly dated.
“was nice introduction, although I don't know how up to date it is”HN comment, 2021
“see the author's presentation at FOSDEM 2015 - I found it really amusing”
Amusing deep dive from SILE's author at FOSDEM 2015.
Full comment
Of recent attempts at dethroning LaTeX, there's also SILE, which actually reuses some LaTeX internals. For some examples of the output (hard to find, the author seems not great at marketing), see e.g.: linklinklinklinklinklink For a deeper dive, see the author's presentation at FOSDEM 2015 - I found it really amusing - from the starting line of: "I wrote a typesetting system - by mistake." this video
Recommendslahcim8May 2021
“was nice introduction, although I don't know how up to date it is”
Nice introduction to SILE as TeX alternative.
Full comment
Recently I have been also thinking about TeX's internals, also because I feel the pain points you describe in at link . I have too thought about experimenting with TeX rewrites/alternatives and particularly in Rust. I don't know if you are aware, but finl has been also submitted to Lobsters ( link ). One of the comments mentions SILE ( link ). I looked into it ( this video was nice introduction, although I don't know how up to date it is). It seems to me that SILE replaces many pain points in TeX, while being somewhat close to LuaTeX (and TeX in general), due to use of similiar components (Lua, alogorithms, hyphenation patters, libraries). It even supports "LaTeX" like input syntax, but frankly I don't think that is the part of LaTeX I would keep :). Can you share your opinion on SILE?
Cites itgkyaFeb 2017
“I first saw it in FOSDEM '15 talks [1].”
FOSDEM 2015 talk introducing SILE.
Full comment
Yes, it made me recall this, though I first saw it in FOSDEM '15 talks [1]. I thought it'd be nice to see what people think about this as I'm in the looks for a TeX alternative. [1] this video
Cites itsvatDec 2021
“You can see this talk by its author about it”
Talk by SILE's author on its Lua design.
Full comment
> Furthermore, the effort to rewrite as much of the TeX implementation as possible in Lua is perplexing. Very little of the TeX implementation has been rewritten in Lua. (Assuming you're talking of LuaTeX itself and not the "TeX without TeX" wiki page, which is just for demonstration.) LuaTeX starts with the WEB (Pascal) code of TeX, manually translated into C (see e.g. link ), and, additionally, hooks are added: callbacks that can be written in Lua, and which have access to the internal data structures. (By the way, SILE is a separate typesetting system (unrelated to TeX) that is actually written in Lua, and re-implements some of the TeX algorithms in Lua, I think. You can see this talk by its author about it: this video )
Cites itsvatNov 2022
“A couple of the author's talks are also online”
SILE author's talk from FOSDEM 2015.
Full comment
A couple of the author's talks are also online: • this video [FOSDEM 2015, "Introducing SILE: A New Typesetting System"] • link [GRANSHAN Conference 2015, "Global typesetting with SILE"]
