How To Install The Typst.vim Plugin

This brief tutorial explains how to install a Vim plugin for Typst (typst.vim) which was created by developer kaarmu (Kaj Munhoz Arfvidsson). If you are familiar with Vim, this will give you an alternative to using the VSCodium (or VS Code) editor with your local Typst installation. Although this setup is more like working with a traditional LaTeX editor—in the sense that it does not provide a live preview—it offers a writing environment with fewer distractions. Some users might find that appealing.

Plugins extend Vim's core functionality. As a user with limited Vim experience, the mechanics of installing a plugin were confusing to me at first. Fortunately, I found two helpful videos by Jay LaCroix and Eric Murphy which cover the basics of configuring Vim and installing plugins. I recommend that you begin by watching these tutorials, as they will make it easier to follow the instructions.

The “hybrid” method below is a combination of some tips offered by Jay and Eric, as well as the instructions presented by Junegunn Choi on GitHub. It is straightforward and effective.

Prerequisites

Check that you already have these packages installed on your system:

• The Typst pre-built binary. My previous article explains how to install the Typst compiler locally on PCLinuxOS.


• Vim (packages vim-minimal, vim-common, vim-enhanced and vim-X11 from the PCLinuxOS repositories)


• curl


• git

Create Your Local .vimrc File

When you start a new file in Vim, the window is almost blank. The lines are unnumbered and the blue tildes show you where a line is not, i.e., that there is nothing there — yet.

We will begin by creating a local .vimrc file and adding some simple customizations. (This file contains Vim's core global settings.)

Open a Terminal/Konsole and type: $ vim ~/.vimrc

Go into Insert mode and add the following:

" Set compatibility to vim only
set nocompatible

" Show line numbers
set number

" Status bar
set laststatus=2

" Auto-wrap text extending beyond screen length
set wrap

" Encoding
set encoding=utf-8

Note the double quote (") at the start of lines 1, 4, 7, 10 and 13. It is part of Vim's comment syntax. It causes the whole line to be ignored. You do not need a closing quote.

• Save your changes and exit Vim.

Download vim-plug and Place It in autoload Directory

The next step is to download the vim-plug Plugin Manager from Junegunn's GitHub repository and place it in the autoload directory.

Note that are multiple methods to install plugins in Vim. This how-to uses the easy, dependable and performant "vim-plug" Plugin Manager.

Open a Terminal/Konsole and type (all in one line):
curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

You can copy the command above directly from Junegunn's GitHub instructions, if you wish.

Afterwards, you will see something like the screen below:

Add vim-plug Section to Your .vimrc File

Open a Terminal/Konsole and type $ vim ~/.vimrc.

At the end of the file, add the following lines:

" Plugin section
call plug#begin()

    Plug 'kaarmu/typst.vim'
    call plug#end()

This section begins with the command call plug#begin(),, lists the plugin(s) with a Plug command, and ends with the call plug#end() command.

The 'kaarmu/typst.vim' entry designates the actual typst.vim plugin. It follows the pattern (developer's) username + repository name.

Save your changes and exit Vim.

You can add more plugins later, if you wish. Additional plugin entries should be placed between the "plug#begin" and "plug#end" lines. The plugin entries should follow the naming convention described above.)

Install the typst.vim Plugin

Restart Vim: $ vim

In Command mode, type: :PlugInstall

(This opens the plugin manager within Vim and proceeds to install all plugins listed in the .vimrc file. Installed plugins automatically load the next time Vim is started.)

If this succeeds, you should see something like the screenshot below:

Other Plugin Commands

You might find these three commands useful; they are also issued from Vim's Command mode:

PlugUpdate — to install or update the plugins

:PlugDiff — to review the changes from the last update

:PlugClean — to remove plugins no longer in the list

Basic Usage of typst.vim Plugin

:TypstWatch

Use Vim to open your local Typst file and begin editing.

In Command mode, type: :TypstWatch

The typst-watch command activates a mode where Typst continuously monitors the specified file for any changes. When you save your changes, Typst will recompile the file and update the displayed PDF.

This command will open the compiled PDF in a PDF reader—Evince Document Viewer, in the screenshot below:

You can leave your PDF viewer open in the background. Typst will automatically refresh the PDF after you save changes to your source file (with the " :w " command).

If you have more than one PDF viewer installed and need to change the default PDF reader in your desktop environment, I have a publicly shared Typst project with tips on how to accomplish this in KDE Plasma, Xfce, and MATE [subsubsection 6.1.1, pages 6–8].

Error Checking

The typst.vim plugin includes error checking.

In the example below, I intentionally omitted the required colon following "Thylacine" in the term list. (It should be " / Thylacine: ")

When I saved my file, the plugin notified me that there was an error:

In the second example below, I intentionally omitted the required final underscore following "Italicized". (It should be "_Italicized"). The plugin alerted me about the mistake:

Vim Directory Structure

In case you are curious, here is a graphical overview of the Vim-related directory structure after you have installed the vim-plug Plugin Manager and the typst.vim plugin:

Within your /home directory, you will have a .vimrc file and a .viminfo file.

You will also have a .vim directory with various subdirectories:

A subdirectory named autoload will contain the plug.vim file:

There should be another .vim subdirectory named plugged:

This subdirectory contains the typst.vim subdirectory:

In turn, the typst.vim subdirectory contains a variety of components downloaded from kaarmu's GitHub repository when you installed the plugin:

Have fun using Typst with Vim as your editor!