Typst is a system for typesetting documents into various formats: PDF, SVG, PNG, and, in progress, HTML. It is adept at handling technical material, and is often considered to be an eventual LaTeX replacement. We last looked in on Typst a year ago, when it had reached version 0.13. A new version, 0.15, was released in June with lots of new features, including support for variable fonts, MathML, multiple bibliographies, and more.

Variable Fonts: Typst now has support for variable fonts. Most fonts are distributed in a set of files containing their glyphs in different weights, in variations such as italic, bold, and so on. A recent development in the world of typography is the advent of variable fonts, which can contain all their variations in a single file. This both saves space and can permit greater flexibility.

To test the new Typst feature, I downloaded two open-source variable fonts: Roboto Flex, a general-purpose font with 13 axes, and Zycon, a font containing no letters but 17 small decorative pictures. Zycon's six continuous axes smoothly alter various aspects of the pictures, making the font useful in animations.

MathML: HTML export is still an experimental feature of Typst, but this release shows significant progress. The main new HTML feature is the translation of mathematics into MathML.