Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
blog.jez.io
Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
1–10 of 184 posts
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#2I don't think most people are reaching for LaTeX to write to-do lists or other ephemeral notes (which can be pretty effectively written just in .txt), but because they'll need some feature that is simple in LaTeX but difficult or impossible elsewhere.
However, I doubt anyone who argue with a modified premise of "Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX, when writing blog posts." But that wouldn't produce as many clicks, either.
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#3I do reach for Markdown/Pandoc whenever possible, but on longer documents one will end up using lots of LaTeX tricks to get the job done (newcommands, subfigures, or that strange package that respects the typesetting conventions of your field).
Plus, I think Pandoc-based collaboration is still out of reach, as there are simply too many moving parts: the underlying LaTeX distribution, templates, filters, most of them only available through cloning git repositories.
So a typical workflow of mine is: draft in Markdown/Pandoc, start adding stuff, but migrate to LaTeX very soon if you notice something is going wrong (also, the Pandoc LaTeX output sometimes needs some tweaking, so it's better to leave Markdown while the document is relatively small).
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#4Writing can have two goals. Sorry three. Firstly, to communicate with yourself: the subclasses being taking notes and "thinking aloud on paper"
The other goal being to communicate with others.
Markdown is good for both. Sorry all three.
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#5I do reach for Markdown/Pandoc whenever possible, but on longer documents one will end up using lots of LaTeX tricks to get the job done (newcommands, subfigures, or that strange package that respects the typesetting conventions of your field). Plus, I think Pandoc-based collaboration is still out of reach, as there are simply too many moving parts: the underlying LaTeX distribution, templates, filters, most of them…
For simple stuff, I prefer org-mode. I have great memories of using OmniOutliner on OS X Tiger. The hierarchical nature of outliners is great for structuring thoughts quickly. Org is even better, as it's plain text and has tons of modules for all sorts of crazy things, including kanban or spaced-repetition. And plenty of export options, including many facilitated by pandoc, literate programming, etc.
I do use LaTeX, but I have a love-hate relationship with it. Lots of LaTeX packages don't compose well, and there are tons of pitfalls. But there are beautiful parts too, like TikZ or Memoir. I'd be happier with TeX, but few people use that.
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#6If you are just reaching for something to jot notes and whatnot, you could do worse than looking at org mode. Pandoc is nice, but I have yet to find that a simple export from org doesn't get me most of where I want to go.
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#7Markdown can do quite a lot, but it doesn't have any way to write mathematical formulae. Since that's 90% of why I use LaTeX in most cases it seems silly to recommend Markdown. LaTeX has a superset of features, and is well suited to what it does properly (typesetting). Markdown is quick and easy to use, so it's good for blog posts.
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#8We recently added support for embedding LaTeX expressions (and really, any dynamically-generated DOM) within Markdown template literals to Observable notebooks. So you can say md`I like ${tex`\\KaTeX`}`, and KaTeX renders its logo, which is then embedded within the generated Markdown.
I’m admittedly biased, but I love the ease of writing Markdown combined with being able to inline arbitrary DOM for math, sparklines etc. More examples here:
https://beta.observablehq.com/@mbostock/measuring-color-diff...
https://beta.observablehq.com/@mbostock/introduction-to-html
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#9LaTeX for scientific documents, Markdown for lightweight text documents, and ODT from a text editor for everything else.
Re: Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX
#10I don't think most people are reaching for LaTeX to write to-do lists or other ephemeral notes (which can be pretty effectively written just in .txt), but because they'll need some feature that is simple in LaTeX but difficult or impossible elsewhere. However, I doubt anyone who argue with a modified premise of "Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX, when writing blog posts." But that wouldn't produce as many clicks, either.
[deleted]