201–210 of 298 posts
https://chat.openai.com/g/g-YX1CmSAA9-franz-enzenhofer-pando...
installs pandoc and then you can interact with it via chat interface.
sad that to PDF conversion does not work, as it would need pdflatex and I can't find a simple downloadable version (amd 64 linux) anywhere on the internet. If you have one on hand, please link it. I willl upload it, too. then PDF conversion will work.
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My solution would be to go to the start of each paragraph and hold J (shift + j) until the entire paragraph was joined onto one line, and then go down to the next one. I guess it depends on how long your emails are but this is pretty quick.
My problem with this method is that it's not convenient especially when there are lots of paragraphs. When you highlight all the paragraphs and press shift J, it unwraps everything into a single line. This results different paragraphs ending up on the same line. You also need to undo the changes you made to avoid disturbing the original file content.
to record a macro that joins a single paragraph together
@f
to then replay that macro times
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People use things like LaTeX exactly because of this problem. Word processing software brought the problem of inconsistent formatting and layout within the grasp of everyone and boy! ...did they grab it with both hands. Systems based on plain text allow the author to concentrate on content only, without the need to format. Personally I find LaTeX misses the mark. Too much markup is needed and it detracts. I'm a fan o…
TeX documents have a distinctive look because of their typography. Back when printed resumes were a thing, whenever I saw one done in TeX, I would recognize the CM font right away. I'd then look at the resume early, since I knew that it came from a nerd. Mine was of course also done that way.
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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.
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 thought writing code in vim was debatable, but emails...you went to far for me.
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Most tech people who use Word know how to use it and that is exactly the problem. We don't have the benefit of ignorance. We send off drafts to someone for commenting or editing and get an inconsistently formatted mess back because others don't even know that styles exist and use manual / direct formatting instead. We are the ones that have to suffer because people we are forced to collaborate with do not take 5 minu…
Good point, sigh...this is so true. I have created a 45 minute tutorial of 'how to use word properly' to address this exact pain point. I send a link to my students if their first draft commits any 'sins'. BTW, when I said tech people, I was thinking mostly about the computer savvy academics who use Latex for everything.
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There is a free web version of Word that is pretty good.
You mean OpenOffice? Because it's not quite the same thing. It can cause some differences in appearance for docx (though that doesn't mean much, since M$FT Word also doesn't display their own doc format consistently either).
I’m talking about the Microsoft product that is now sold under the Microsoft 365 Online brand.
It isn’t a perfect replacement but for the times I’ve used it, it’s been pretty good.
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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…
Have you tried Libre Office? I'd love to hear your opinion.
A question to experienced Pandoc users: I want to write a small book that I want to generate in 3 formats: HTML pages, EPUB and PDF. What is the best input format (source format) for the book? Pandoc Markdown? CommonMark? GFM? I'm a little hesitant to committing myself to Pandoc Markdown or any Markdown because they all have tiny differences with each other. Each is like its own standard. I considered Org-mode for so…
I'm writing a small book. I shared my experiences with Pandoc and Asciidoctor in case it helps you or anyone:
https://adammonsen.com/post/2122/
Your use case may differ from mine (I didn't see you mention printing), but my anecdote above might help suss out tooling differences between Pandoc and Asciidoctor.
Here's an example printable book generator using Asciidoctor PDF: