I think the size difference was just me being careless with zoom levels in different apps. I thought it was enough to make the point, since you can compare the space sizes to the character sizes. I put another comparison here: https://imgur.com/a/aZRx6fs , this time with same font size and zoom level.

Anyway I agree that looking exactly the same as Latex is not particularly desirable, but it helps for convincing Latex users to switch.

(The screenshots were made on Linux, with scaling but not fractional I think... But I can't check right now)

OK that must have been the screenshot software and zoom producing the blurriness.

In this new screenshot the rendering is perfect and one can't really tell any difference.

As for Latex I think it's a strong desire to belong to a special club that makes people use it and try to stick to the very specific look. It does render math equation nicely, but the rest isn't anything special, especially compared to modern font/techniques.

I agree with you entirely fwliw. For me it's not a fetish particularly, the spacing just looks too wide in that one case and the comparisons if anything confirm that. "Too wide" is of course entirely a matter of personal opinion but I can't see myself switching to something I don't prefer the output of. I may well change my mind in future and I'm probably going to give typst a go at some point, because looking at the website there's a lot to like imo. Goodness knows for all that latex produces beautiful output it is a system with a lot of quirks and warts.

Sure, Latex gives a nice output but you have to suffer through a lot for that. Look at the new screenshot, it's so close you can't really tell the difference without superposition.

In any case, Typst seem so much nicer to use that I think it's OK to let go of some minor details...