It's a monolithic kernel with a relatively sane collection of "setup" macros that, by and large, can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do.
If you're curious about how to build TeX from scratch, have a look at my TeX.SE answer:
https://github.com/typst/typst is an interesting competitor to ConTeXt. It's not even TeX, but somehow I tried (and liked) it before I tried CoTeXt. TeX syntax is not something I ever enjoyed in LaTeX.
How much more compatible with LaTeX is ConTeXt than typst? For example, is there tikz for ConTeXt?
> TeX syntax is not something I ever enjoyed in LaTeX
ConTeXt is still TeX, but its syntax is very different from LaTeX's. Nearly every command takes an optional set of key–value arguments, and everything is integrated into the core, so the syntax is much more regular. Example:
%% Compile with "context <filename>.tex".
%%
%% ConTeXt is included in the default installation of TeX Live, so if you have
%% LaTeX installed, you probably already have ConTeXt installed too.
\setupcaptions[color=red]
\setuphead[section][color=blue]
\setupheader[color=green]
\definehighlight[emph][color=orange]
\setupTABLE[each][each][color=red, framecolor=green]
\starttext
\section{Introduction}
\startplacefigure[title={Caption.}]
\externalfigure[sys:///cow.pdf][width=2cm]
\stopplacefigure
Hello, world! \emph{This is emphasized text.}
\startTABLE[textcolor=red]
\setupTABLE[row][1][style=bold]
\NC[style=italic] Header 1 \NC Header 2 \NC Header 3 \NC\NR
\NC Cell 1 \NC Cell 2 \NC Cell 3 \NC\NR
\stopTABLE
\pagebreak
\section[
title={Alternate Syntax},
style=smallcaps,
]
\samplefile{knuth}
\startsection[title={This works too!}]
Some inline math: $x_{1, 2} = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$.
\stopsection
\stoptext
> How much more compatible with LaTeX is ConTeXt than typst?
Most engine primitives (\hbox, \def, \relax, etc.) and Plain TeX macros (\quad, \nobreak, \bigskip) work in both LaTeX and ConTeXt, and the math syntax is almost identical between LaTeX and ConTeXt too. Otherwise, they don't share very much in common.
> For example, is there tikz for ConTeXt?
Sure, it's called TikZ :) Meaning that TikZ has native and full support for ConTeXt, so
\usemodule[tikz]
is all that you need to use it. Metafun [0] is ConTeXt's built-in alternative to TikZ, but you can use both in the same document if you want.
> It's a monolithic kernel with a relatively sane collection of "setup" macros that, by and large, can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do.
I don't know what constitutes "sane", but I literally just downloaded and installed it right now because you mentioned it, and it choked on a trivial hello world:
$ mtxrunjit --script context doc.tex
...
> tex error on line 1 in file doc.tex: ! Undefined control sequence
...
1 >> \documentclass{article}
2 \begin{document}Hello, world\end{document}
...which might explain why it goes unmentioned?
I feel like this is gonna be a tougher sell than you expect. How the heck is a user expected to switch to ConTeXt?
I get that it can't handle LaTeX, that's literally my entire point. It's no wonder it goes unmentioned in TeX threads. The statement that it "can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do" pushes a lot under the rug. If that was a sufficient painting of reality, you could've just dropped the mic with "Ubuntu can accomplish much of what Windows and its packages can do" back in 2010, or with "Windows RT can do can accomplish much of what Windows can do" back in 2012, etc.
> I get that it can't handle LaTeX, that's literally my entire point. It's no wonder it goes unmentioned in TeX threads.
LaTeX != TeX. If this were a LaTeX thread, then I would agree with your point that it would make less sense to bring up ConTeXt (although someone always mentions Typst in every LaTeX thread, which is essentially the same thing). But this is a thread about TeX Live, which includes ConTeXt (and a dozen other TeX formats and engines), so it seems completely fair to mention it here.
The entire point of ConTeXt is that it is different from (and incompatible with) LaTeX. So for users who like parts of LaTeX (its output quality, its math typesetting, its underlying box model) but dislike other parts (slow speed, package conflicts, confusing setup macros, not very modern), ConTeXt is often a good alternative. But most users have never even heard of it before, which is why I appreciate Dave mentioning it in discussions like these.
I personally think that LaTeX is the best choice for typical users [0], but HN readers are seldom typical, and are often the types of users whom I think would appreciate ConTeXt.
> you could've just dropped the mic with "Ubuntu can accomplish much of what Windows and its packages can do" back in 2010, or with "Windows RT can do can accomplish much of what Windows can do" back in 2012, etc.
Well I used to use Windows RT exclusively (and am still fond of it), now use Linux exclusively, and prefer ConTeXt over the other TeX formats, so all of these seem like good arguments to me :).
Ah sorry, my bad. I thought that "mtxrunjit" was removed longer ago, but I only removed it from TeX Live in June 2025. Regardless, you should use the "context" command to compile files with ConTeXt. Example:
I imagine making a buggy and unmaintainable version could be done quickly, sure, if you don't mind your documents being killed by a thousand small typesetting cuts. TeX is incredibly complicated for good reasons, people should read Knuth's book.
The reason TeX is written in a 1984 dialect of Pascal is that the typesetting bugs have been solved in a completely specified language; it is much easier to write a transpiler for Pascal->C than to rewrite TeX. Asking an LLM to rewrite it in the language-du-jour is a huge cost for very little benefit.
BTW it has been so depressing in the last few months to see LLM-generated projects make claims about performance/accuracy, but there is no benchmarking code on Github and the "thousands of tests" are all useless happy paths. I am sure we will see some grifter claim that Claude rewrote TeX and I am sure dozens of credulous HN users will take it seriously. But we won't see a useful rewrite. It'll be resume-oriented slop like that dishonest Mathematica-in-Rust project we saw last week.
> it is much easier to write a transpiler for Pascal->C than to rewrite TeX. Asking an LLM to rewrite it in the language-du-jour ...
I thought that the combination of the Pascal and Java versions[1] of TeX would be sufficient guidance to produce another language/implementation.
> is a huge cost for very little benefit
A greenfield Java implementation with an MIT license would have been useful[2] for rendering TeX inside of my desktop Markdown editor[3]. Instead, I had to rename all the Java source files to abide by the NTSPL license terms (or GPLv2, which is viral).
> A greenfield Java implementation with an MIT license would have been useful[2] for rendering TeX inside of my desktop Markdown editor[3]. Instead, I had to rename all the Java source files to abide by the NTSPL license terms (or GPLv2, which is viral).
The source files make it look like DANTE owns the copyright, so you could try asking them to relicence it. Both Philip Taylor and Hans Hagen were involved in the leadership of NTS, and both are still active, so if they are okay with it, then DANTE would hopefully agree to relicence it.
I wonder what's the status of LaTeX 3[1][2]. Also, it would be nice to have an automation in the style of Tectonic[3][4] (which looks like a dead project itself) out of the box.
Seems like an admirable project but they’re building on creaky foundations. Even the way TexLive is released feels like something from academia than a real piece of software.
I work on the packaging in TeX Live, and I'll freely admit that it's arcane and convoluted (from a packager's perspective), but it's super reliable, and the end-users are mostly insulated from all the inner workings. It can indeed be tricky to debug if something breaks, but this is thankfully quite rare.
Sometimes bugs appear only if you load three specific packages in a specific order. The fact that there are no namespaces and every package can modify everything makes it a complete nightmare. LaTeX would do well to take a hint from the lessons we learned in the past 40 years. Or just retire it and push something sane forward, like Typst.
I don't know why you think the condescending tone is appropriate. I've been using LaTeX for twenty years and I believe I understand the difference. I also respectfully disagree on your assessment of Typst.
I’ve written book-length documents in Plain TeX (probably what you mean — nobody writes in “raw” tex) and in LaTeX. I would say that Typst, if it’s a replacement for anything, is a replacement for LuaLaTeX, because of its programmability. But in this article I framed it as a possible LaTeX replacement:
Congrats to all the TeXLive team on a new release.
If you're stuck on something LaTeX related, remember there's the latest edition to The LaTex Companion. It even has an appendix explaining the (in)famously cryptic LaTeX/TeX error messages:
Here's the list of notable changes in TeX Live 2026 [0]. LaTeX is released independently from TeX Live, so looking through its changelog [1] is also helpful if you haven't updated recently.
I recently had good luck writing a paper in org-mode. The .tex export has been around forever but I never really played with it - unlike other Emacs users, I don't actually use org-mode that much.
But in the end, it worked surprisingly well. Mind you, I didn't have anything too fancy in the paper (no figures, minipages, tikz, etc...), so that made the task very easy. But it was a good workflow:
- Write org-mode text in left buffer.
- Have Emacs issue a .tex export on save.
- Have the document automatically compile when .tex files are newer than the .pdf file
- Have the right buffer show and automatically reload the pdf file.
That made it so I could just write stuff in the left buffer and on save, the pdf in the right buffer would update and reflect the last changes. I found that a quite pleasant setup.
After quite some time, and actually after reading this post[0], I took another look at GNU Texmacs, this time with a little more depth and patience. And indeed, the program is an incredibly powerful tool for creating beautiful documents. I'm also currently on a roll where I'm reappreciating the philosophical advantages of WYSIWYG. Anyway, for me it's definitely an insider tip for anyone who is annoyed by LaTeX and is open enough to try WYSWYG.
To save people’s time: this thing is not LaTeX and you won’t be able to use any of the LaTeX packages that you need if you are preparing a manuscript for a journal (for example).
I've also started using typst for some projects.
I am slowly getting used to the syntax. But it's a process for me.
I also still have latex projects/docs
Worth noting that LLMs are very bad at writing cetz code, even if you try to feed them all the docs. I had to use TiKZ and import the resulting PDFs for some of the more complex illustrations in my thesis.
I've recently made a dozen vastly different projects with Typst, ALL of which would have created dependency hell, syntax noise, and hours of extra pointless work in Latex. It's such a clear win at this point it's embarrassing.
I mean, LyX has met my needs since 2019 - I don't particularly need to be optimistic about it. I was even able to bring in parts of my old LaTeX preamble with me, especially some utility macros. It was a pretty painless switch with immediate benefit.
(I've done everything in it from write honors theses and format CVs.)
I've been interested in Typst. But beyond report generation (which I avoid in general), I don't really have a general "document processing" tool, but multiple specialized ones, and given Typst's current jack of all trades/master of none status, I'm not sure what it'll replace. I use Quarto for a lot of my statistical computing, LyX if I need to do a lot of finicky math typesetting (e.g. if I need to break out \qquad), and Word - god forbid - for my non-technical collaborators.
After delivering my thesis in LaTeX, I never bothered with it again, even at CERN back in 2003 most folks were using a mixture of Word and FrameMaker, with templates to have a TeX like paper output.
Not GP, but for me two of the most exciting things are the UTF-8 ready engines such as LuaLaTeX and XeLaTeX, on one hand; and on the other, the fontspec package and similar ones, allowing LaTeX to seamlessly use system fonts.
On the scholarly front, the use of BibLaTeX is a significant step forward re: BibTeX.
Yup, I totally agree that LuaLaTeX and BibLaTeX are awesome; that was even my platform for the (uncontested) TUG board election [0]. But UTF-8 mostly just works with LaTeX these days, regardless of the engine: even pdfLaTeX has defaulted to UTF-8 since 2017 [1]. Fonts are still a mess in pdfTeX though, so I'll definitely second your fontspec+LuaLaTeX recommendation.
- The LaTeX tagging project [0] is definitely the biggest ongoing project, and they've been making really good progress lately [1] [2].
- ar5iv [3] is somewhat outside the TeX world, but I find it pretty interesting since it's able to successfully convert most articles to HTML. Usually conversion tools have either required perfect markup or manual fixes, but ar5iv is completely automatic, and it even works with the horrible programming practices that most document authors use.
- I'm personally a big fan of ConTeXt [4], a lesser-known TeX format. ConTeXt itself isn't new, but it tends to gain new features quicker than the other formats; some recent new features include improved math typesetting [5] and improved paragraph breaking [6] [7].
- The LaTeX Team just published "latex-cmds" [8] a few weeks ago, which is a handy reference to all the recently-introduced macros (and some older ones too).
If you’re installing this on a fresh machine, the network installer is usually the smoother option. The full ISO is great if you’re setting up multiple systems or need an offline install, but for most people the net install saves some headaches.
This comment section has made it clear to me (and maybe others that use some of these tools every 10 years) that just finding the correct project/binary if you want to use TeX can be... interesting :)
I recently co-authored an article [0] that attempts to explain the various engines and formats.
My personal recommendation would be to just always use "lualatex", or "pdflatex" if you have older documents that won't work with LuaLaTeX for some reason. I'm also a big fan of ConTeXt [2], but I realize that that isn't a practical option for most people.
One thing I like about a full install of TeX Live is it comes with a large number of amazing manuals in PDF form; perfect for reading when bored on the plane without Internet access.
Look for /texmf-dist/doc/fonts/memdesign/memdesign.pdf if you want a fun non-technical one.
I found out the other day that llama.cpp can work with PDF images offline without Internet connection. Combine with local Rustdoc and TeXLive, playing with plan TeX becomes fun again.
Personally I use LaTeX for anything I have to write as pdf, I understand many critics but... So far is The Tool to makes good typesetting. PostScript can do nearly the same at a harder effort for the user, Typist can't match, others are just LaTeX wrappers or can't deliver anything decent.
The problem is that today we have a massive gap in development: there was a time when high-quality FLOSS development existed, followed by an era of resting on one's laurels while creating very little, mostly just stuff built on top of existing systems in an attempt to simplify things, which only resulted in making them more complex and fragile, with zero innovation.
Today, we have generations of developers who simply don't know classic FLOSS tools beyond the surface level and lack the technical background to create new ones that aren't dependent on the tech giants. This is because obsolete universities have de facto trained legions of big tech labourers rather than autonomous technicians capable of standing on their own two feet.
The issue is that there was never a real desire to give "the power of computing" to end users. Consequently, at the first opportunity, the desktop was undermined and rejected to keep everyone dependent on someone else's services. Now, young developers don't know how to evolve back towards the desktop, even though they sense, without fully understanding, that this is the right way forward.
We are losing decades of potential evolution with repercussions for centuries to come, just to feed a handful of people who profit from others' ignorance.
So, while it's true that on one hand we have excellent tools that are obsolete, clunky, and difficult to integrate today, it's also true that on the other hand we have a void. This is because the foundations of modern software are flawed and unsustainable, created solely for the interests of Big Tech. Either we move past this or we head for ruin, as has been happening for some time now; eventually, it will be impossible to carry on and we'll have to start again from scratch, with enormous costs, delays, and damage.
SwiftLatex, TexLyre and StellarLatex seem to be exactly this. Apparently this is something a lot of people want to see in the world, awesome stuff. I wonder what's the performance like between native XeLaTex and these wasm version and if it will be Overleaf's demise if these solutions can be easily self-hosted by organizations without worrying about the server getting bogged down by compile jobs.
You can still install old versions going back to the 90s [0]. If you specifically want to update/install a package on a current installation of TeX Live 2025, you just need to run
tlmgr repository set https://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/historic/systems/texlive/2025/tlnet-final
(You can replace that URL with any of the historic mirrors in [0])
https://wiki.contextgarden.net/
It's a monolithic kernel with a relatively sane collection of "setup" macros that, by and large, can accomplish much of what LaTeX and its packages can do.
If you're curious about how to build TeX from scratch, have a look at my TeX.SE answer:
https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/576314/2148
I'd imagine making a FOSS port in Rust that has non-cryptic error messages wouldn't be a multi-year project using modern GPTs.
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