Performance¶
Textures are generated during compilation by the WebAssembly plugin and embedded as images in the PDF. Typst runs plugins in an interpreter, so texture generation dominates compile time. The quality theme trades appearance against time and size.
#show: lookscanned.scan.with(
preset: "office-scan",
quality: (resolution: 100, tile: true, granularity: "line"),
)
resolution¶
DPI of the generated textures, default 150. Pixel count grows with its square: 100 produces images about 45 % the size of 150. Each kind is rendered at a fraction of it suited to its content:
| Kind | Resolution |
|---|---|
paper |
⅛ |
stains |
⅓ |
edges |
1/10 |
ink |
4× (glyph details are smaller than a stroke) |
| others | 1× |
tile¶
With tile: true (default), one 40 mm grain tile is repeated on every page and stored once in the PDF. With tile: false, each page gets its own full-page grain: more varied, much heavier.
granularity¶
| Value | Moves | Cost |
|---|---|---|
"page" |
Page rotation only | lowest |
"line" |
Each block (paragraph, heading, list, figure, block equation, code block) | low |
"word" |
Each word | higher; prevents hyphenation |
"char" |
Each character, vertically | highest |
Caching¶
Typst memoises plugin calls: identical textures (same kind, size, seed and parameters) are generated once per compilation. Ink tiles are shared across the document, and fading is quantised to three levels so that only a few distinct ink tiles exist.
Typical figures¶
| Document | Compile time | PDF size |
|---|---|---|
One A5 page with equations (tests/layout.typ), built-in preset |
1.3–1.9 s | 130–220 KB |
Four-page textbook excerpt (examples/old-textbook.typ) |
4.5 s | 470 KB |
Measured with Typst 0.15.1 on an Apple Silicon laptop; times include the first, uncached compilation.