alexandria/README.md

# alexandria, an archive

of all of my digitized work and notes. Want to steal my stuff? This is where
you do it.

Please note, all of my work is licensed under [CC-BY-NC-ND
4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en) (that's the
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives 4.0 license), with one
exception. The Nix source code that helps provide the document compilation
infrastructure is free and unencumbered software released into the public
domain. This includes all of the files in `./2024/nix` as well as any files
ending in `.nix` generally. See more details in [the source code
README.](./2024/nix/README.md)

I (and the license) do not grant permission for my work being passed off as
someone else's (perhaps for the purpose of plagiarism). Obviously this does not
extend to the Nix source code, which is in the public domain.

## Typst compilation infrastructure

This repository contains a sophisticated system for reproducibly compiling
Typst documents using Nix, the purely functional package manager. Typst is a
modern typesetting system aiming to replace the venerable LaTeX system.

Within the [2024 directory](./2024), an ongoing experiment is taking place to
create a monorepo organization structure for a large amount of Typst documents.
Some custom Nix infrastructure has been created to provide a similar package
interface to the familiar `nixpkgs` package repository. Instead of building
programs, however, it builds documents. Review [the flake](./2024/flake.nix)
for more information.

Since the flake in [2024] provides a package set, you can use the `nix search`
command on it to discover documents just like `nixpkgs`. Try:

```sh
nix search "git+https://code.youwen.dev/youwen5/alexandria?dir=2024" digression
```

You can compile any document in this repository yourself very easily! Simply
run:

```sh
nix build 'git+https://code.youwen.dev/youwen5/alexandria?dir=2024#digression-linear-algebra'
```

The builds are managed by the amazing
[typix](https://github.com/loqusion/typix) project. It helps provide a
hermetically sealed build environment, which means that all _dependencies_ of
the documents are specified, including fonts, commonly forgotten due to being
installed systemwide. Also, the build process clones down a copy of the entire
[Typst package repository](https://github.com/typst/packages), version locked
in [flake.lock](./2024/flake.lock). This means that packages are also
guaranteed to be reproducible and available.

Compilation creates a `result` that points to the compiled PDF in the Nix
store. Currently, the file is not marked as a PDF with a `.pdf` file extension,
but one should be able to easily `cp` the file from the Nix store into another
directory with a proper file name. Work is ongoing to make this as smooth as
possible.

## Goal of the experiment

The end goal is to produce an easy-to-use infrastructure for creating personal
repositories of Typst documents. LaTeX documents could feasibly be supported as
well in the repository with some refactoring, but this is not a priority as the
I am not currently using LaTeX.

All of the work is sectioned into a `2024` directory for two reasons.

Firstly, since all of the documents in the repository depend on the `nixpkgs`
and `typst` specified in the central `flake.nix`, breaking changes may require
refactoring and maintenance of old documents. This is how `nixpkgs` works, but
these repositories host _documents_, not software. Thus, I have opted to
organize the tree in such way that each year should be its own standalone
repository. This means that a year's worth of documents can be frozen in time
at the end to ensure that all of the existing documents will be able to
reproducible compile in the future without any maintenance, as the `nixpkgs`
and `typst` versions will be frozen in time.

Secondly, this will encourage further development each year to incrementally
improve the infrastructure.

Eventually, if the experiment is successful, I may decide to create a
standardized library or repository template for people to use.