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Pandoc

pandoc.org

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Re: Pandoc

#161

Post by enriquto »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #153
enriquto wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the equivalent of seeing somebody use right-click to copy-paste What would you prefer, instead? CTRL-C, CTRL-V? SHIFT-INS, CTRL-INS? some vim incantation? As a select-to-copy/middle-click-to-paste guy, seeing people use these inferior alternatives looks extremely annoying to me.

I think that depends if your workflow is oriented around the keyboard or the mouse. For me it is keyboard oriented and I frequently use (Ctrl)+Shift+Arrows for finegrained selection anyways so Ctrl+C/V is most convenient. I also use Vimium in my browser. If my workflow was mouse oriented I'd instead use Gesturefy. I think they're equivalent and certainly both are better than using the right-click menu.

I don't always use the mouse, but when I do, I only use the mouse, no keyboard needed at all.

Using CTRL+C/V requires an unholy synchronization of mouse and keyboard. But unix-style middle-click paste is entirely mouse-controlled and very elegant. Of course, if you are inside a text file, you can use vim keyboard tricks that are even faster because you don't need to select the text.

Re: Pandoc

#162

Post by WolfOliver »

2cynykyl wrote: post #57
andy99 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll probably lose some nerd cred: I do most of my writing in MS word, I find it easier to cut and paste and add footnotes and section headers. And then I use Pandoc to convert the docx into the format I want, usually HTML*. I used to do markdown in vim but I found that for most of what I do I prefer word. I do write code in vim... * I use this css file when converting: https://gist.github.com/killercup/5917178

I also use Word for all my writing too, so wanted to defend you. People (tech people at least) have lost sight of the fact that writing should happen in "word processing software", and Word is the best-in-class. To people who say "Word sux", I say "That just means you don't know how to use Word properly". Writing any markup or markdown syntax in an IDE is a disaster for the creative process. Jack Kerouac used to type…

> Writing any markup or markdown syntax in an IDE is a disaster for the creative process.

I would like to quote this on a MonsterWriter landing page

Re: Pandoc

#163

Post by golly_ned »

w10-1 wrote: post #158

The author is great - smart and responsive. He's inspired a small number of long-time, serious contributors. Together they maintain a super-high-traffic utility that simplifies the very arbitrary complexity of document formats for untold millions of users. It's really a stunning example of social good.

Besides that, he's a tremendous philosophy professor. I took a class with him years ago. Besides being brilliant, I found him funny, approachable, and never condescending, which is rare for philosophy professors of his renown.

Re: Pandoc

#164

Post by pbhowmic »

In a world where most READMEs and the like are in Markdown format I like to use Asciidoc and I like to keep the two in sync using pandoc

Re: Pandoc

#165

Post by brrsty »

kugurerdem wrote: post #5

This is one of the most useful programs that I use. I use it for turning .md files into .html or .pdf. I use it for creating slides with it. I even use it for fixing the hard-wrapped text I write in vim before sending emails. When I write in vim, I prefer the text to be hard-wrapped, but for emails, I like it better when the text is not wrapped. I recommend arp242's essay explaining the problem with hard-wrapping [1]…

In Vim, J on a selected paragraph does this job.

Re: Pandoc

#166

Post by jbranchaud »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #22
on_the_train wrote: post #20

Every couple of years I need pandoc for some project. And teach time I relearn the same idiosyncrasies. Some odd defaults, the sometimes annoying depths you have to do to customize HTML templates, the weird filter infrastructure. What a neat strange program it is.

I have this same issue, and the same with `jq` and `GNU Parallel`. When you need them you need them, and nothing else quite works, but I have to re-learn them every time.

I outsource most of my esoteric `jq` syntax questions to ChatGPT. It does really well with them, usually turning up solutions that I'd struggle to munge together from several different google search results.

I wonder how ChatGPT would do with focussed pandoc requests.

Re: Pandoc

#167

Post by kelnos »

2cynykyl wrote: post #57
andy99 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll probably lose some nerd cred: I do most of my writing in MS word, I find it easier to cut and paste and add footnotes and section headers. And then I use Pandoc to convert the docx into the format I want, usually HTML*. I used to do markdown in vim but I found that for most of what I do I prefer word. I do write code in vim... * I use this css file when converting: https://gist.github.com/killercup/5917178

I also use Word for all my writing too, so wanted to defend you. People (tech people at least) have lost sight of the fact that writing should happen in "word processing software", and Word is the best-in-class. To people who say "Word sux", I say "That just means you don't know how to use Word properly". Writing any markup or markdown syntax in an IDE is a disaster for the creative process. Jack Kerouac used to type…

You're kinda contradicting yourself there.

Kerouac used a typewriter, which is about as minimal as it gets before you drop down to pen and paper. Something like Word is full of distractions: fonts, section headings, various formatting options, etc.

If you really want to get into the flow of writing, do it like Kerouac: plain text editor that wraps words at whatever width is reasonable to you.

After you're done, then copy it into a word processor and apply your formatting rules. Or just stick with the plain text editor and use anything from markdown to tex.

Ultimately, though, use what you're most comfortable with! That's going to be different, sometimes, for different people. The idea that it's a "fact" that everyone should be writing in any particular way using any particular software is just nonsense.

Re: Pandoc

#168

Post by lhamil64 »

andy99 wrote: post #35
kugurerdem wrote: post #5

This is one of the most useful programs that I use. I use it for turning .md files into .html or .pdf. I use it for creating slides with it. I even use it for fixing the hard-wrapped text I write in vim before sending emails. When I write in vim, I prefer the text to be hard-wrapped, but for emails, I like it better when the text is not wrapped. I recommend arp242's essay explaining the problem with hard-wrapping [1]…

I'll probably lose some nerd cred: I do most of my writing in MS word, I find it easier to cut and paste and add footnotes and section headers. And then I use Pandoc to convert the docx into the format I want, usually HTML*. I used to do markdown in vim but I found that for most of what I do I prefer word. I do write code in vim... * I use this css file when converting: https://gist.github.com/killercup/5917178

Out of curiosity, why use Pandoc? Can't Word natively save as HTML, PDF, etc?

Re: Pandoc

#169

Post by ggregoire »

weinzierl wrote: post #52
kugurerdem wrote: post #5

This is one of the most useful programs that I use. I use it for turning .md files into .html or .pdf. I use it for creating slides with it. I even use it for fixing the hard-wrapped text I write in vim before sending emails. When I write in vim, I prefer the text to be hard-wrapped, but for emails, I like it better when the text is not wrapped. I recommend arp242's essay explaining the problem with hard-wrapping [1]…

It is one of the most useful programs I use and the only useful program I ever used that was written in Haskell.

Don't know if you would call this a "program" but PostgREST is written is Haskell too.

https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest

Re: Pandoc

#170

Post by criddell »

chaxor wrote: post #117
2cynykyl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also use Word for all my writing too, so wanted to defend you. People (tech people at least) have lost sight of the fact that writing should happen in "word processing software", and Word is the best-in-class. To people who say "Word sux", I say "That just means you don't know how to use Word properly". Writing any markup or markdown syntax in an IDE is a disaster for the creative process. Jack Kerouac used to type…

There are other reasons to not like Word other than 'it six's. One is availability. If you're on Linux all day, your options don't really contain word - it's not free to download and install due to needing a license. You have to go and find some other computer that runs windows, and start it up - just for that one document. Then you have a single use computer, which obviously isn't a great experience. Closest thing t…

There is a free web version of Word that is pretty good.
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