Oicana vs LaTeX

LaTeX is a long-established typesetting system widely used in academia and publishing. Some applications use LaTeX (or derived engines like XeTeX, LuaLaTeX) to generate PDFs by compiling .tex.tex files with injected data.

Oicana uses Typst, a modern typesetting system that shares many of LaTeX’s goals but takes a fundamentally different approach to syntax, compilation, and developer experience.

1. Create a .tex.tex template with placeholders (often using a text templating engine)
2. Inject data into the template by replacing placeholders
3. Run the LaTeX compiler (pdflatexpdflatex, xelatexxelatex, or lualatexlualatex) to produce a PDF

A typical LaTeX distribution (TeX Live) is 4–7 GB. Even minimal installations are hundreds of megabytes. This makes LaTeX impractical for containerized deployments, serverless functions, or client-side generation.

The Typst compiler (wrapped by Oicana) is a few megabytes. The WASM build runs directly in the browser.

LaTeX compilation is slow — often several seconds per document. This can be acceptable for academic papers but problematic for on-demand PDF generation in applications.

Typst, and thus Oicana, can compile templates in single-digit milliseconds.

LaTeX’s syntax is notoriously difficult to learn. Error messages are often cryptic, and debugging layout issues requires deep knowledge of the TeX engine.

Typst has a modern, readable syntax and produces clear error messages. Developers who have never used a typesetting system can be productive in very short time frames.

Injecting dynamic data into LaTeX templates is risky. LaTeX has many special characters (\\, {{, }}, %%, $$, &&, ##, __, ^^, ~~) that need careful escaping. Improper escaping can break compilation or lead to unexpected output.

Oicana templates define explicit typed inputs. Data is passed through a structured API, not through string interpolation, eliminating injection issues entirely.

• Your team already has deep LaTeX expertise and a large library of existing templates
• You need very specific typographic features that LaTeX’s ecosystem uniquely provides

	LaTeX	Oicana
Install size	4–7 GB (TeX Live)	∼ 15 MB (native library)
Compilation speed	Seconds	Milliseconds
Syntax	Backslash commands, complex	Modern, readable markup
Error messages	Cryptic	Clear and actionable
Data injection	String replacement (escaping required)	Typed inputs
Browser support	No	Yes
Package ecosystem	Vast (CTAN)	Growing (Typst Universe)