/typst-author

Foundations

Foundational types and functions.

Here, you'll find documentation for basic data types like integers and strings as well as details about core computational functions.

Calculation

Module for calculations and processing of numeric values.

These definitions are part of the calc module and not imported by default. In addition to the functions listed below, the calc module also defines the constants pi, tau, e, and inf.

Standard Library

A module that contains all globally accessible items.

Using "shadowed" definitions

The std module is useful whenever you overrode a name from the global scope (this is called shadowing). For instance, you might have used the name text for a parameter. To still access the text element, write std.text.

#set page(margin: (left: 3em))
#let par = [My special paragraph.]
#let special(text) = {
  set std.text(style: "italic")
  set std.par.line(numbering: "1")
  text
}

#special(par)

#lorem(10)

Conditional access

You can also use this in combination with the dictionary constructor to conditionally access global definitions. This can, for instance, be useful to use new or experimental functionality when it is available, while falling back to an alternative implementation if used on an older Typst version. In particular, this allows us to create polyfills.

This can be as simple as creating an alias to prevent warning messages, for example, conditionally using pattern in Typst version 0.12, but using tiling in newer versions. Since the parameters accepted by the tiling function match those of the older pattern function, using the tiling function when available and falling back to pattern otherwise will unify the usage across all versions. Note that, when creating a polyfill, sys.version can also be very useful.

#let tiling = if "tiling" in std { tiling } else { pattern }

...

System

Module for system interactions.

This module defines the following items:

• The sys.version constant (of type version) that specifies the currently active Typst compiler version.

• The sys.inputs dictionary, which makes external inputs available to the project. An input specified in the command line as --input key=value becomes available under sys.inputs.key as {"value"}. To include spaces in the value, it may be enclosed with single or double quotes.

  The value is always of type string. More complex data may be parsed manually using functions like json.