AI is the primary audience for our writing, and the primary reason to reconsider our choice of markup format. It's all about semantic compression: Typst source, markdown, and asciidoc are far more concise than LaTeX source.
I'm observing, not here to convince anyone. The last six months of my life have been turned upside down, trying to discover the right touch for working with AI on topological research and code. It's hard to find good advice. Like surfing, the hardest part is all these people on the beach whining how the waves are kind of rough.
AI can actually read SVG math diagrams better than most people. AI doesn't like reading LaTeX source any more than I do.
I get the journal argument, but really? Some thawed-out-of-a-glacier journal editors still insist on two column formats, as if anyone still prints to paper. I'm old enough to not care. I'm thinking of publishing my work as a silent animation, and only later reluctantly releasing my AI prompts in the form of Typst documentation for the code.
> AI is the primary audience for our writing, and the primary reason to reconsider our choice of markup format.
That's AI which must adapt, not humans. If AI can't adapt then it can't be considered intelligent.
> Some thawed-out-of-a-glacier journal editors still insist on two column formats, as if anyone still prints to paper.
Narrow text is easier to read because you don't have to travel kilometres with your eyes. I purposely shrink width of the browser when reading longer texts.
Printing is still not uncommon in professional scientific environments. When you actually have to read a paper, it turns out that actual paper is quite convenient.
LaTeX can compile to HTML. PDF is just one of many compilation targets, that happens to look nice in almost any platform.
- AI is the primary audience for our writing
I've been wondering about this a lot lately, specifically if there's a way to optimise my writing for AI to return specific elements when it's scraped/summarised (or whatever).
The idea of publishing as an animation + Typst doc actually sounds pretty compelling… the old PDF format is starting to feel pretty stale
Personally, I write for humans.