[Feature request] Preview in HTML format

[akioweh]

Typst compiler already supports live HTML preview, but the missing QoL is editor integration so we can have update-on-keystroke instead of update-on-save.

[chomosuke]

I'm confused, does Tinymist already provide this functionality? Also, I believe this plugin already does update-on-keystroke.

[akioweh]

typstc can indeed compile to HTML (although still experimental)... but tinymist doesn't have direct support? so this is done via typst watch --format html main.typ and live update only happens on save, not keystroke

I was thinking if we skip tinymist altogether and make typstc watch an autosaving proxy file to mimic the live update, but this will probably perform very poorly
... so yeah probably need to wait for tinymist support

[chomosuke]

Right, I see, that makes sense, thank you for the suggestion. I'm wondering what will be the benefit of html rendering over whatever tinymist does currently? Is it because the typst compiler will be the reference implementation/better supported?

[akioweh]

Sorry I think what I wrote was a bit confusing.
I am not suggesting to replace any of the existing strategies; the current setup is perfect. (Tinymist literally uses the official typst compiler to, well, compile, so there's no issue there.)

The point of an HTML preview is that it is a pageless target where the document is a single free-flowing break-less page. For example, I personally like to compile notes to HTML instead of PDF to view as a webpage, so a matching preview would improve ergonomics.

...but I did not exactly do my research when opening this issue; most of the work required for live-preview is actually in the scope of Tinymist instead of this plugin.
Only once Tinymist supports live-previewing HTML (Myriad-Dreamin/tinymist#1238) will this request be relevant, so feel free to close this for the time being.

[asmund20]

@akioweh you can use #set page(height: auto) as a temporary workaround to get preview without page-breaks. Does not get the HTML-specific styling, but is closer at least.

[akioweh]

@akioweh you can use #set page(height: auto) as a temporary workaround to get preview without page-breaks. Does not get the HTML-specific styling, but is closer at least.

this is quite helpful indeed; thank you!