LaTeX to Typst

This section covers converting a LaTeX thesis to Typst. If your thesis is already in Typst, skip ahead to Bilingual PDF.

When and why convert

There are several good reasons to move from LaTeX to Typst:

• Bit rot. Old LaTeX sources often stop compiling after a few years – packages vanish, engines change, build toolchains break. Typst is a single binary with no dependency hell.
• HTML export. Typst >= 0.12 has native HTML output. LaTeX-to-HTML pipelines (tex4ht, LaTeXML, Pandoc) are fragile and rarely produce clean results.
• Modern tooling. Incremental compilation, built-in package manager, readable error messages, and a scripting language that feels closer to Python than TeX macros.

You do not need to convert if you only need the original PDF. This process is worthwhile when you want to maintain, extend, or republish the thesis.

Strategy: chapter by chapter

Do not try to convert the entire thesis in one pass. Work incrementally:

1. Create the skeleton. Set up main.typ with page layout, fonts, and imports. The boilerplate’s main.typ is a good starting point. Get it to compile (even if empty).

2. Convert one chapter at a time. Pick the simplest chapter first to establish patterns. Copy the LaTeX source into a .typ file, convert the markup, compile, and fix errors. Once it looks right, move to the next.

3. Keep the LaTeX source. Don’t delete the original .tex files until the entire thesis compiles in Typst. You will refer back to them constantly.

4. Validate the PDF. After each chapter, compare the Typst PDF against the original LaTeX PDF. Check that equations render correctly, figures are placed, and cross-references resolve.

Who does what

The conversion is a collaboration between you, an LLM, and Typst packages.

LLM: bulk markup conversion

Large language models are excellent at the mechanical part of LaTeX-to-Typst conversion. Give the LLM a LaTeX chapter and ask it to produce the Typst equivalent. Be explicit in your instructions:

• Preserve all \label{} as Typst labels (<label-name>).
• Preserve all \ref{} / \cite{} as Typst references (@label-name).
• Keep all math content exactly as-is (only change LaTeX math syntax to Typst).
• Maintain the same section/subsection structure.

An LLM can typically convert a 20-page chapter in a single pass with ~90% accuracy. The remaining 10% is where human review matters.

Human: review and judgment

After the LLM produces a draft, review carefully:

• Mathematics. LLMs sometimes subtly alter mathematical notation – swapping a subscript, dropping a superscript, changing a symbol. Compare every equation against the original. This is the highest-risk area.
• Cross-references. Verify that labels and references compile without warnings. Typst will tell you about unresolved references.
• Editorial decisions. Some LaTeX constructs have no direct Typst equivalent. You decide how to handle custom environments, unusual layouts, or legacy formatting.

Typst packages

Use established community packages instead of reimplementing LaTeX environments:

Check the Typst Universe for other packages you may need.

Common pitfalls

Bibliography

Typst supports two bibliography formats:

• .bib (BibLaTeX/BibTeX) – if you already have a .bib file, just use it directly. This is the path of least resistance.
• .yml (Hayagriva) – Typst’s native format. Cleaner, but converting from .bib is rarely worth the effort for an existing thesis.

Point to your bibliography file in main.typ:

#bibliography("references.bib", style: "springer-lncs-alphabetical.csl")

CSL style files let you match the citation style of your original thesis. Download the right one from the CSL repository.

Figures

• PDF figures from LaTeX work directly in Typst. If your LaTeX project generated figures as .pdf files, copy them over and use image("figures/foo.pdf").
• EPS files need conversion to PDF or SVG first. Use epstopdf or Inkscape for batch conversion.
• TikZ figures do not exist in Typst. Either keep the compiled PDF output from LaTeX, or redraw with Typst’s drawing primitives or the CeTZ package.

French ligatures (oe, ae)

French text contains ligatures like “œuvre” or “nœud”. LaTeX handles these through font ligatures, but Typst needs the actual Unicode characters.

The boilerplate defines shorthand variables in prelude.typ:

#let oe = "œ"
#let OE = "Œ"
#let ae = "æ"
#let AE = "Æ"

Use them inline with #{} syntax: n#{oe}ud, c#{oe}ur, #{oe}uvre. You can also type the Unicode characters directly (œ, æ) if your keyboard layout supports it.

Why not a global show rule? A blanket show "oe": "œ" would produce false positives: “coefficient” → “cœfficient”, and every English “oe” (does, goes, poem…) would be corrupted. Explicit characters avoid this entirely.

Encoding

Typst is strictly UTF-8. Old LaTeX files may use Latin-1 or other encodings. If you see garbled characters, convert the source file:

iconv -f latin1 -t utf-8 chapter.tex > chapter-utf8.tex

Then feed the UTF-8 version to the LLM for conversion.

Equation numbering

LaTeX and Typst number equations differently. LaTeX typically numbers by section (e.g., Equation 3.2), while Typst numbers sequentially by default.

You can configure Typst’s equation numbering, but don’t waste time trying to reproduce the exact LaTeX numbering. Readers of the new version don’t care about matching the old equation numbers – they care about internal consistency.

Reference projects

Both reference projects started as LaTeX theses and were converted to Typst following this approach:

• balouf/phd-pagerank – PhD thesis, ~200 pages, heavy on linear algebra and graph theory.
• balouf/hdr-p2p – HDR thesis, ~80 pages, combinatorics and distributed systems.

Browse their Git history to see the conversion unfold chapter by chapter.