Typst

LaTeX produces beautiful documents, especially mathematics, and academia has relied on it for decades. Anyone who has used it also knows the cost: a multi-gigabyte TeX Live installation, compilation waits measured in seconds, error messages that read like hieroglyphics, half an hour of research to change a margin, and packages that conflict with each other.

Typst is that system rebuilt. 55,454 stars, Apache-2.0, with a compiler written in Rust. It aims to keep LaTeX's typographic quality while dragging the experience into the present:

• Speed. Compilation is incremental and typically finishes in milliseconds. Paired with an editor you get change a word, see the preview update instantly — a feedback rate that genuinely changes how you write, eliminating LaTeX's edit-compile-look cycle.
• Simple syntax. Markup resembles Markdown (*bold*, = Heading), and when you need programmability there is a complete scripting language with variables, functions, loops and conditionals, rather than LaTeX's tangle of macros and layout.
• Readable errors. It states which line has what problem, instead of sending you on an archaeological dig.
• No package hell. Mathematics, bibliographies (BibTeX and CSL citation styles), cross-references, automatic figure numbering and tables of contents are all built in.

Where it fits: theses, course reports, technical documentation, résumés, conference posters and slides (dedicated template packages exist). The quality of mathematical and scientific typesetting holds up to LaTeX's standard.

To be clear about:

• The ecosystem is young. The current version is v0.15.1 — still 0.x, meaning syntax can still change. Templates and third-party packages are nowhere near LaTeX's decades of accumulation, and some journals and universities accept only LaTeX templates, so confirm requirements before submitting. If your institution mandates a LaTeX thesis template, you still need LaTeX.
• Note the business model. The command-line compiler is fully open source under Apache-2.0 and free — writing, compiling and producing PDFs locally costs nothing. Separately there is an official web collaboration platform (typst.app) where team features and some advanced functionality are a paid subscription. What we list is the open-source local compiler, which carries no ads and no feature limits.
• CJK typesetting needs font configuration, as the defaults do not fully cover it; the documentation explains how, and results are excellent once set.

In short: starting a new writing project with no hard LaTeX requirement, begin with Typst and save yourself a great deal of wrestling with the typesetting system.