Non-md content formats

[vsheg]

Hi,

Currently, Zola processes Markdown (with inline HTML allowed) as source content, while non‑Markdown files can be included from the static/ folder.

Alternatively, Hugo supports HTML natively and allows Pandoc integration to work with alternative formats.

Typst is a new, powerful typesetting language written in Rust that offers HTML export (still under development) [ref][ref]. Given that Zola is also written in Rust, supporting Typst as a first‑class content format would be natural and would allow authors to use Typst’s modern syntax and features without leaving the Zola ecosystem.

I’d like to hear the developers’ and community’s thoughts on alternative formats in Zola. Are there plans to allow this, or potentially to accept PRs?

Personally, I've started using Typst for my blog. I use Pandoc to convert Typst → Markdown and Quarto with a Make pipeline to build the website, but although Quarto is powerful (it allows to include HTML and Jupter notebooks), it's written in JS and is awfully slow. I'm considering switching to Zola (thanks for your work) or Hugo.

[cestef]

I've been maintaining a fork of Zola that adds server-side math and diagram rendering, along with some caching improvements. Given Typst's strengths, I wonder if it could be integrated in a similar way—maybe as a build-time renderer for specific content blocks. If there's interest, I could share some of my work or explore how Typst might fit into Zola's architecture.

PS: nice blog, by the way!

[djoyce-ts]

Asciidoc would be nice too.

[Keats]

The tricky part is handling shortcodes. It might be easier once content is actually templated (unlike now where shortcodes needs parsing). Asciidoc though it not getting any popular and not really bringing much to the table compared to typst for example

[vsheg]

@cestef
Did I understand correctly that your fork modifies Zola’s internals to generate static HTML with math and diagrams? I’m not a Rust developer, but I assume Typst can be used directly as a crate. However, I’m unsure how likely the Zola developers are to accept Typst as a dependency, even as an optional one.
P.S. Thanks!

@djoyce-ts
Technically, if Zola supported HTML files natively, implementing an arbitrary format—e.g., via Pandoc—would not be difficult. If Typst were supported, its built-in WASM virtual machine and plugin system could enable native rendering of formats like LaTeX, as demonstrated by mitex. A similar plugin could be developed for rendering AsciiDoc in Typst.

[cestef]

Typst by itself adds about 15-20MB to the binary, so yeah it's a pretty big boy 😄. The engine is able to do so much more than just plain math rendering so it makes sense.

The draft PR for math rendering: #2791 (katex and typst implementation)
My blog (source) is also using this if you want to see how it looks: https://blog.cstef.dev/lagrange/

[vsheg]

@cestef The result looks great

20 MB may not seem alarming, but as I understand it, the project aims to minimize the number of dependencies used.

Checked #2791. Despite Typst currently not supporting MathML (but it will), it's already possible to compile a document to HTML using a simple snippet via typst v0.13.0-rc1.

#let template(body) = {
  show math.equation.where(block: false): it => html.elem("span", html.frame(it))
  show math.equation.where(block: true): html.frame
  show image: it => html.elem("img", attrs: (src: it.source))
  body
}

#show: template

For this file wrapped in the template, Typst generates correct HTML output with SVGs for math blocks. Therefore, HTML export is already functional.

[cestef]

typst v13 looks promising ! I just tested it out, this could really be a game changer