Installation and Setup

To get started, you need the Oicana CLI and an editor for Typst. Both are only necessary on machines used for Oicana template development. An end-user machine, running software that uses an Oicana integration, does not require any additional installations.

Oicana CLI

Install a prebuild binary from GitHub or let a script do that for you.

Bash script:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/oicana/oicana/releases/download/oicana_cli-v0.1.0-alpha.11/oicana_cli-installer.sh | sh

Powershell script:

-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/oicana/oicana/releases/download/oicana_cli-v0.1.0-alpha.11/oicana_cli-installer.ps1 | iex"

After the installation, run oicana --version to make sure the installation succeeded.

The CLI can manage Oicana templates. The most relevant commands for this guide are oicana pack to package a template and oicana compile if you want to test template compilation. See the CLI chapter for more information.

Editor for Typst

You can edit Typst files in any text editor, but syntax highlighting and live previews make development significantly easier. Here are some suggestions:

Several IDEs have Typst plugins with live previews and syntax highlighting.
- Visual Studio Code: Tinymist offers a complete experience with live preview, syntax/error highlighting and more.
- JetBrains IDEs: Kvasir is in Beta and lags behind Tinymist feature-wise.
Official Typst editor in the browser.
- This editor has a significant free tier and a pro tier for $8 per month. It is maintained by the Typst company.
- Web based; No installation required.
- You can work on the same document with multiple people and sync your templates to GitHub or GitLab.

For this Guide

In the following chapters, you will create a basic Oicana template that can be used with any integration. After creating the template, you’ll be able to choose which integration to explore based on your preferred tech stack.