Thank you (author here). I deliberately used the default settings. Typst mentions settings for the line breaking system in the manual (for example you can set the penalties for changing interword spacing between lines), the speedata publisher can switch on margin kerning.
There might be settings to speed up things, so if any of the authors provide me with the settings, I'd be happy to implement those.
I benchmark six different typesetting systems, typst ist by far the fastest. This article describes why the speedata Publisher is still my choice for producing product catalogs.
I have ca. 190 test cases on which I run my software and compare the md5 sums of the resulting PDF. If they are not the same, I create a PNG for every page and compare visually with imagemagick.
The trick is to remove all random stuff from the PDF (like ID generation or such).
This takes about 3 seconds on the M1 Pro laptop. I think this is very much okay.
I have a related feeling about TeX. It has superb output quality but the programming is awful. When LuaTeX finally arrived a few years ago, it was possible to do almost everything you have done before in the TeX language (starting with \backslashes) in Lua.
I have (shameless plug) created a database publishing software using this technique (https://github.com/speedata/publisher/). Once in a while I have to use LaTeX and it feels a bit old school to do the macro programming.
My next project is to rewrite the TeX algorithms in Go - see https://github.com/speedata/boxesandglue. Already usable but not TeX like in any way (this is just a library, not a frontend software like TeX)
Did you try to enforce the AGPL somehow? In the sense that the user that puts it on a (web)server must provide the end user the source code? (The 'A' in AGPL).
I started with a closed source software but I opened it shortly after. So I didn't start with this in my mind, but since I love open source software, I had the feeling that I should open it and try my luck. I love the idea of the GNU projet.
I give away my database publishing software (https://www.speedata.de/) for free and make a living with offering services (helping companies producing high quality product catalogs and datasheets etc. using the software) Its not much, but I live a happy live.
I spend about 1/2 of the time doing services and 1/2 hacking on the software. Quite often, customers are paying for new features in the software so it is paid hacking. Great!
Yes, I've had an exchange with the author about this, and he said, it might be possible to tweak this, but his is buried in some obsucure configuration.
I really like Lua and hacking things in Lua, so this editor looks like its what I need. But there is one show stopper, that I have no idea how to avoid: scrolling horizontally on my Mac is terrible slow, and I have lots of files with long lines..
The author and the communtity around it is great, all questions that I had have been answered quickly. So every few months or so I download the newest package and look if anyting has changed meanwile.
There might be settings to speed up things, so if any of the authors provide me with the settings, I'd be happy to implement those.