Sessions need a Windows laptop or desktop.
If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer.
Typst · Foundations
Write a six-page report in Typst, from plain text to a finished PDF and a template you can use again.
What you’ll end up with
A Typst project, Brindle Lane water trial, holding the Society's report as a six-page document: its text, two captioned figures, a table made from a CSV file with a total row, a numbered equation, a bibliography made from a BibTeX file, a title page and a contents page, with the layout kept in a template file and the finished report exported as a PDF. Then a second project for an invented rooftop garden group, from briefs.
10
hours in all — about 6½ guided, 3½ on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Typst. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Typst. There’s no payment and no card required.
From a plain-text report to a finished, reusable document
01105 min
Start a project and write the report in markup
A Typst project named Brindle Lane water trial holding the Society's report, with its headings made, one phrase in italics and one in bold, a bulleted list and a numbered list, each shown correctly in the preview.
0290 min
Set the page, the text and the headings with rules
The report laid out by rules: an A4 page with set margins and page numbers, a serif font at a set size, justified paragraphs, numbered headings, larger first-level headings and the society's name in small capitals; and one compiler error made on purpose, read and fixed.
03100 min
Add two pictures as figures and refer to them
Two pictures in the project as numbered, captioned figures in the right places, and the report's typed mentions of Figure 1 and Figure 2 replaced by references that Typst numbers; and a reference to a label that does not exist, made on purpose, read and fixed.
04105 min
Make a table from the CSV file, with a total row
A captioned table in Results built from results.csv, with a header row, a row for every plot and a Total row whose two totals Typst works out; the typed Table 1 in the text replaced by a reference; and an error from adding up text, made on purpose, read and fixed.
05105 min
Add an equation and a list of sources
A numbered equation for the mean yield and the letters of its explanation set as maths, referred to from the text; a bibliography built from sources.bib and printed under References, listing the sources the text cites; and a citation of a key that is not in the file, made on purpose, read and fixed.
0695 min
Add a title page and contents, make a template, export the PDF
The report's rules kept in a template file as a function, the report using it with its title, author and date, a title page and a contents page built by Typst, the whole report six pages long, and a PDF of it exported and opened from your computer.
What you need before you start
A Windows laptop or desktop
Sessions need a Windows laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Windows 10 or Windows 11, in a current browser.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside Typst.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
None. Typst's free plan is $0 a month, needs only an account, and holds everything this course uses; no card is asked for and nothing in this course is bought.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course.
Before you start
The course covers Typst, in your browser.
- A Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer and a current browser; Chrome is the one Typst's own pages show
- A free Typst account. Typst's own pages say that many features of the web app are free and that only an account is required; the course uses nothing on Typst's paid plan, starts no trial and asks for no card. Signing up asks for a name, an email address and a password, and a few things that are yours to answer as you like; session one walks through it
- The Brindle Lane pack from the course page, saved in one folder you can find again: brindle-pack.pdf, report-text.txt, results.csv, sources.bib, site-plan.png and water-chart.png; and the Harbour Wharf pack for the on-your-own runs: harbour-brief.pdf, wharf-report-text.txt, beds.csv, refs.bib, roof-plan.png and harvest-chart.png
- For a fresh start on any session after the first, that session's start file from the course page, brindle-s2-start.zip to brindle-s6-start.zip, and harbour-s2-start.zip to harbour-s6-start.zip: each holds the project's files as the sessions before leave them. To use one: in File Explorer right-click the zip and choose Extract All, which opens a box asking where to put the files and gives you a folder of them when you accept what it offers; on your dashboard choose Empty document and name the project Brindle Lane water trial (Harbour Wharf compost trial for an on-your-own run); if a project of that name is already there from an earlier session, add a word of your own to the new one's name so that you can still tell the two apart on the dashboard a week later, and from then on it is the new one the course means wherever it names the project; open the extracted main.typ in a text editor — right-click it, choose Open with, and pick Notepad from the list it offers; .typ is an ending Windows has no program for, so if the list offers no text editor, take its option to choose another app and pick Notepad there — and copy its text over the text of the new project's own main.typ; then upload each of the other extracted files with the file panel's upload button, Upload a new file
- Share your whole screen with Alongrail rather than one window: the course reads the Typst web app in your browser and, in two sessions, Notepad or File Explorer too
- Each session has a guided run on the Brindle Lane report and an on-your-own run on the Harbour Wharf report. Do the on-your-own run after its guided run, straight after or once all six guided sessions are done
- Who sees what: your projects are kept in your Typst account, on Typst's servers, and are private until you share one; this course never shares one. The pictures and every name in the packs are invented, and the pictures are Alongrail's, which you may use in this exercise and in your own copy of the finished report
- Alongrail is not affiliated with Typst. The software is named plainly, without its logo
- Not covered: packages, columns, footnotes, custom styles at scale, collaboration, comments, version history and the paid plan's folders and Git; they belong to the level after this one.
- The report's maths is one equation and a few inline letters; the course teaches the way into maths, not its range.
- Windows only, and nobody has watched a learner do it. Typst's compiler was run through every end state of every session, and the web app itself was used on a free account: a project made, a file added, an error read and the PDF exported.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Start with a plain-text report and a free Typst account, and finish with a six-page report that looks the way you want and stays correct when the text changes: headings that number themselves, a page layout kept in rules, figures and a table that number and refer to themselves, a table built from a CSV file with a total row, a short piece of maths, a bibliography built from a file, a title page and a contents page, a layout kept as a template function, and the PDF exported. Then the same again, from briefs, for a second report.
A Typst project, Brindle Lane water trial, holding the Society's report as a six-page document: its text, two captioned figures, a table made from a CSV file with a total row, a numbered equation, a bibliography made from a BibTeX file, a title page and a contents page, with the layout kept in a template file and the finished report exported as a PDF. Then a second project for an invented rooftop garden group, from briefs.
How a session works
- Open Typst
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Typst and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 10 hours in all·about 6½ guided·about 3½ on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Typst Foundations — write a six-page report in Typst, from plain text to a finished PDF and a template you can use again
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The report you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Starting a Typst project in the web app and writing a document in markup · Making headings, emphasis, bulleted and numbered lists · Setting a document's page, text, paragraph and heading rules, and a show rule · Placing images as captioned figures and referring to them by label · Reading a CSV file into a table and totalling a column · Writing short mathematics, and numbering and referring to an equation · Building a bibliography from a BibTeX file and citing from it · Making a title page and a contents page · Moving a layout into a template function and using it · Reading a compiler error and fixing its cause · Exporting a finished report as a PDF
What was built
A Typst project, Brindle Lane water trial, holding the Society's report as a six-page document: its text, two captioned figures, a table made from a CSV file with a total row, a numbered equation, a bibliography made from a BibTeX file, a title page and a contents page, with the layout kept in a template file and the finished report exported as a PDF. Then a second project for an invented rooftop garden group, from briefs.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Typst Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the report you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Typst when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Typst?
Typst is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
The Brindle Lane Allotment Society ran a watering trial on eight of its plots last spring, and its secretary, Mara Venn, has written up the result as plain text. The Society wants a proper report out of it, with its figures, its two pictures and its sources all in place.
Making it look right once is the easy half. The question is whether it will still be right afterwards, and Mara already knows the ways it goes wrong, because she has fixed them by hand before: a picture moved, and every mention of its number now points at the wrong one; a figure changed in the table and not in the sentence that quotes it; a layout that drifts from one page to the next because it was set by hand in a dozen places.
She is also not the last secretary the Society will have. Whoever writes next season's report should be able to start from this one's layout without copying anything out of it, and should not be able to put the numbers out of step even by accident.
So the job is a report that keeps itself straight: headings, pictures, a table, an equation and a list of sources that number and refer to themselves, figures read from the file they came from, and a layout stated once as rules and then kept where the next report can use it.
Your job is to build the report that answers it.
Do I need to know Typst already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 10 hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 6½ hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Typst runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Typst Foundations is Foundations in Typst. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Typst. All the courses →