The compiler is open source, and written in rust. The web interface is free, and I think it will stay that way? (I think they run on donations). They could really use some clearer marketing on the front page...
> The compiler is open source, and written in rust.
Wow, that's really appealing to me; thanks for pointing that out. I was thinking "well, this looks nicer than LaTeX, and I'm really frustrated with LaTeX, but I really don't want to jump right into a big WYSIWYG thing". Now I'm really interested. Most of the other "replacements" suffer in some big ways (Markdown and RST/Sphinx are great for structured content, but not great for meticulous control over the presentation).
And I've got a cool rendered PDF with a math formula!
I'm very keen now to see exactly how flexible, robust, and extensible this is. LaTeX can do basically anything, but you pay for the power in blood. I would love a typesetting system that isn't horribly painful to extend.
I think they were very careful to have the same expressivity as latex. It’s basically a whole language with a human-friendly syntax.
Their discord channel has a bunch of community plugins if you want a showcase. It’s not yet as big as latex, obviously, but I think it already has the critical mass to make it a sound choice.
