Much of my week was dedicated to Rheo or Rheo-adjacent work. I added Atom feed generation to the html crate, and in the process did some refactoring to improve the quality of the codebase. I also minted a v0.3.1 release so that I could integrate this feature into the build process for my main blog and weeknotes, both of which now have Atom feeds!
Though Atom/RSS feeds are a run-of-the-mill feature for any static site generator (which is part of what Rheo is) and are not really complicated or interesting in themselves, the Atom feed implementation in Rheo highlights how it is architected as an extensible compilation toolchain for Typst.
In Rheo-adjacent news, I spent much of Wednesday writing a job application for a limited project adding PDF Forms to the Typst compiler, a freelance project that the Typst core team recently put up as a 3-month gig over the summer. I applied as, though I’ve made a few minor contributions to the open source project, it would be helpful to get some structured experience contributing. This summer is an especially good time for me to take up something like this, as I’ve just effectively extended my PhD by a year by receiving back-to-back predoctoral fellowships for the upcoming Fall and Spring.
The take-home project was an interesting exercise. It involved reading the PDF and HTML specs for interactive forms, and then designing a Typst API that integrates the two in a unified interface. As this is essentially the task of the limited project (three months of work), it quickly became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to smooth all of the sharp edges in the divergence between the two formats, so I just did my best in (the vicinity of) the 4-hour time limit. Here is the take-home assignment I submitted for the role, which is naturally typeset with Typst/Rheo. I expect to hear back about whether I’ll move to the interview stage this coming week.