MPI Bilingual Typst Template — Design Decisions

Location

Repo / project root: ~/documents/mpi/
Template directory (contains lib/): ~/documents/mpi/translate-files/
Template: translate-files/lib/mpi-bilingual-template.typ
Example usage: translate-files/从物品整理到心灵整理/mindful-organizing.typ

Goal

A single reusable Typst template for bilingual Chinese-English 静心学堂丛书 publications. Host .typ files should contain almost no setup code — only an #import, a #show: mpi-bilingual.with(...) call, and the article content.

Font choice

Chinese: Noto Serif CJK SC (Google Fonts)
English: Noto Serif (Google Fonts), used as a freely available substitute for Times New Roman.

Page and paragraph formatting

Setting	Value	Rationale
Paper	A4	Standard publication size
Margins	2.5 cm all around	Matches existing documents
Body size	10.5 pt	五号 per the formatting guide
Line spacing (`leading`)	1.5 em	1.5× line height per the guide
Paragraph spacing	1.5 em	Equivalent to one blank line between paragraphs
Alignment	justified	Matches the existing `mindful-organizing.typ` look
First-line indent	2 em	Keeps bilingual paragraphs visually distinct
Heading numbering	none	Headings are written verbatim in the host file
Heading spacing	`above: 2em`, `below: 1.2em`	Clear section breaks without page breaks
Footnotes	8 pt, left aligned	Per the formatting guide

Title page

Titles and subtitles are passed as free Typst content (title-cn, title-en, subtitle-cn, subtitle-en).

The gap between title and subtitle uses linebreak() inside a single paragraph so the spacing follows the line-height: 1.5 rhythm instead of an arbitrary v() length. A larger v(1.5em) separates the Chinese block from the English block.

The TOC shows only English headings with dotted leaders and page numbers. Chinese headings are displayed as compact section headers above their English counterparts. This mirrors the behavior of the old helpers.typ but lives in the template.

Host file contract

A host file should look like this and nothing else:

#import "../lib/mpi-bilingual-template.typ": mpi-bilingual

#show: mpi-bilingual.with(
  title-cn: [中文标题],
  title-en: [English Title],
  subtitle-cn: [——副标题],
  subtitle-en: [—Subtitle],
)

= 一、章节标题
= I. Chapter Title

中文段落……

English paragraph …

Compile with the helper script:

~/documents/mpi/toolkit/scripts/compile-typst.fish ./从物品整理到心灵整理/mindful-organizing.typ [output.pdf]

Or manually from the template directory (~/documents/mpi/translate-files/):

cd ~/documents/mpi/translate-files
typst compile --root . ./从物品整理到心灵整理/mindful-organizing.typ

The --root . is required because the import ../lib/... would otherwise escape Typst's sandbox.

What is intentionally not in the template

No inline helpers like #speaker or #quote-cn in host files. The template sets global formatting only. Dialogue speakers can be marked with **Name:** when truly needed.
No automatic blue styling for scripture quotes, because reliably detecting quoted classics in plain text requires explicit markup.
No per-chapter footnote numbering; Typst's default continuous numbering is used.

References

references/静心学堂丛书英文统一格式-20260211.pdf — MPI formatting guide
translate-files/从物品整理到心灵整理/mindful-organizing.typ — example host file and current reference implementation

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