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Pandoc

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Re: Pandoc

#261

Post by dredmorbius »

sciolist wrote: post #251
snet0 wrote: post #7

I wrote pretty much all my university work in Markdown with inline Latex, using Pandoc to generate a pdf. I'm sure there are things you can do in "pure" latex that you can't do this way, but for most normal cases, it's so much easier. You just use the simple Markdown syntax for basic text formatting, and then can use the power of Latex when you need to display mathematics, graphs, tables or similar.

I do something similar for my notes, but instead converting to HTML! (e.g. https://cswartout.com/notes/cse422.html ) I keep my notes as markdown in a repo, then "build" them onto a web server after pushing. I've found it easy to write and always accessible, which is nice.

OT, you're the second sciolist I've found online.

See: https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/bio>

(Bottom of page.)

Re: Pandoc

#262

Post by dredmorbius »

mapreduce wrote: post #46

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…

FYI, I've done this myself several times, though usually working with an extant book, either from a text or OCR dump, or hand-typing it myself (don't ask).

For works which consist principally of standard sections (e.g., Book / Part / Chapter / Section / Subsection / ...), fairly standard font styles (normal/roman, italic, bold, code blocks / pre / poetry), footnotes/endnotes, and perhaps a few tables, illustrations or images, Pandoc-flavour Markdown is far more than sufficient. Writing or formatting is virtually seamless.

If you're writing something with more complex internal formatting, then I'd lean more strongly into LaTeX. You can do most of your initial authoring in Markdown and generate LaTeX from that, for further finishing work, or simply start with LaTeX. The key discriminator here would be either mathematical formulae or complex image placement. Note that creating the output you want in HTML or ePub (itself effectively a specialised HTML format) might still be challenging.

The next step up would be a specific layout tool (Krita or Adobe Illustrator, say).

But start with Markdown + Pandoc and see if you like the results. It should be Good Enough, and if not offers a smooth path to more powerful tools.

Re: Pandoc

#263

Post by adastra22 »

Quekid5 wrote: post #212
riwsky wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you’re looking for Haskell nerds, in which case you should prioritize Comic Sans.

Simon PJ glares :) For those not in the know, Simon Peyton Jones is one of the originators of Haskell, and sort-of-but-not-quite BDFL of Haskell... and he uses Comic Sans for all his presentations because it filters out people who will complain about font choice for a presentation.

I write code in Comic Sans, so I'm not one to judge :)

Re: Pandoc

#264

Post by yashrk »

gertlex wrote: post #244
Vegenoid wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to use Word, then that's great, but when you start saying what other people 'should' be doing then they're going to speak up. > writing should happen in "word processing software" Writing should happen where you are comfortable editing text. I am comfortable in same editor where I write code. > To people who say "Word sux", I say "That just means you don't know how to use Word properly". Writing any marku…

> but when you start saying what other people 'should' be doing then they're going to speak up. That's not a prerequisite for the Latex folks, in my experience :D (I'm also in the "wrote my masters thesis in word, including the fair number of equations" group)

Of course you can choose what you use for your personal pipeline.

But Word for collaborative work is a nightmare. Sometimes fastest way to work with the science text or documentation in a Word document is to hire a freelancer to retype all the text in LaTeX or something else.

It's a kind of Trolley problem: sometimes Word fanboys, unfortunately, _should_ suffer to let all the team get the job done.

Re: Pandoc

#265

Post by yashrk »

jll29 wrote: post #197
throwaway81523 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's ideal for hiring - you immediately know which resumes to read and which one to dump into the trash.

So CVs from folks who know LaTeX good enough to change Computer Modern to something else will be dumped into the trash…

Re: Pandoc

#266

Post by yashrk »

criddell wrote: post #170
chaxor wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you mean a Word from Office360?

From my experience Word from Office360 breaks complex formatting of desktop Word document even worse, than LibreOffice/Google Docs does.

Re: Pandoc

#267

Post by hyperhopper »

dillydogg wrote: post #226
snet0 wrote: post #7

I wrote pretty much all my university work in Markdown with inline Latex, using Pandoc to generate a pdf. I'm sure there are things you can do in "pure" latex that you can't do this way, but for most normal cases, it's so much easier. You just use the simple Markdown syntax for basic text formatting, and then can use the power of Latex when you need to display mathematics, graphs, tables or similar.

I do the same thing, except using org mode instead of markdown. I've really come to love org mode for writing.

Org mode is amazing. The only problem with org mode is that more people/tools aren't using org mode.

Re: Pandoc

#268

Post by Tomte »

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 should happen in "word processing software", and Word is the best-in-class.

Or Scrivener. No Zotero plugin, though.

Re: Pandoc

#269

Post by cassepipe »

dotancohen wrote: post #208
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…

Not a flamewar, honest question from someone that couldn't stand Word last time I used it (far over a decade ago) but actually likes Open Office (well, LibreOffice, but I still call it Open Office). I'll grant that the Excel equivalent is nowhere near feature competitive with Excel, but the Word equivalent is, in my opinion, better. Have you tried Libre Office? I'd love to hear your opinion.

A thing I like is that LO writer has a vim editing plugin somewhere on github

Re: Pandoc

#270

Post by globular-toast »

themadturk wrote: post #230
queuebert wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, anyone who's ever learned LaTeX and why it was invented immediately sees how absolutely awful Word is at its rendering. Funny that a trillion-dollar company can't seem to figure out a better algorithm than Donald Knuth mocked up in Pascal decades ago. I think of this as another version of enshittification -- the acceptance of poor performance as the "standard". And don't get me started on math equations in Word…

Seriously, Word (and other word processing software) and TeX come from two separate lines of evolution. Knuth is a computer science guru, and invented TeX to effectively and precisely output technical and scientific documents. Word and other word processors (before and after) came from the creative and business worlds. The two didn't have any influence on each other for many years -- you can write a novel in LaTeX, a…

To be fair, if you use Word properly you can separate content and formatting. The key is to use styles. The problem is nobody learns this and by default the bold and colour buttons etc are right there and oh so tempting. Everyone thinks they can use Word because you just type and do a few obvious things like change font size etc. It's just not considered something that needs to be learnt.
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