Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pandoc

pandoc.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 213 posts

Re: Pandoc

#101

Post by epynonymous »

i have been using catdoc and pdftotext to convert doc and pdf files, respectively. nice to see that there's an alternative that also includes a library, will be checking this out.

a couple questions i have, seems firstly that old school .doc files are not supported, docx yes. unfortunately i still get a lot of docs in .doc format which seems to be microsoft's proprietary format (docx seems to be more open).

my second question is whether or not there's a filter for golang, most of my development is in golang, so i either need to call your cli as a forked process or best to have a native library. i have never worked with haskell so not sure if i can import a haskell library from golang directly. i imagine there'd need to be a golang wrapper around the cli.

Re: Pandoc

#102

Post by foo101 »

BeetleB wrote: post #95
susam wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. If one is going to use LaTeX directly or indirectly via Pandoc, eventually one would have to build up a personal template to fine-tune the look and feel of the documents. If one is going to write LaTeX code anyway, it seems easier and cleaner to use LaTeX all the way, move all the boilerplate along with the personal template to say, a file named preamble.tex, and \input{preamble.tex} in the documents. Howeve…

>If one is going to write LaTeX code anyway, it seems easier and cleaner to use LaTeX all the way, move all the boilerplate along with the personal template to say, a file named preamble.tex, and \input{preamble.tex} in the documents. Not sure why you think it has to be that way. I author LaTeX documents using org mode. Org mode handles most of the boilerplate, and I can still put pretty much any custom LaTeX within…

It isn't clear to me whether you are saying that Pandoc is necessary or if you are saying that Pandoc is unnecessary and LaTeX alone is sufficient for all purposes.

I think your parent comment was saying that LaTeX alone is sufficient. You also seem to be saying that LaTeX alone is sufficient while using Org mode. Would you please clarify if I am interpreting your comment correctly or not?

Re: Pandoc

#103

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

lucb1e wrote: post #46
flatline wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Word’s native diff features not work for you?

Can you diff two Word docs with Word? Afaik you can only hit the "track changes" button, which doesn't help if you got a new version of a document from someone else.

Even if you can do it with Word, GUI interactions aren't composable and extensible the way shell commands are, so you're limited to the features the GUI designer thought of.

Re: Pandoc

#104

Post by yitchelle »

thanatropism wrote: post #55
lucb1e wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you diff two Word docs with Word? Afaik you can only hit the "track changes" button, which doesn't help if you got a new version of a document from someone else.

Yes, and you can merge changes too. Classic Word workflow: I make a document and send it to my boss; he makes some changes but suggests further research etc. and sends me his altered version, but I stupidly work on my own version . Making this right takes like four clicks.

I have been searching for this for a long time and not able to achieve it without resorting to manual copy and paste from one doc to the other.

This sounds like utopia. :-) Do you have a link to a page that outlines these steps?

Re: Pandoc

#105

Post by CJefferson »

smohare wrote: post #74
Schiphol wrote: post #16

I do all of my academic writing in pandoc. As compared to LaTeX this means no boilerplate (yet you can still use full LaTeX syntax for equations and the like) and, if the publisher 'needs' a Word file, you are one click away from providing it. All with plain text files that you can put under version control, get meaningful diffs, etc. It's just great.

I’ve never understood the impetus for not using full LaTeX in an academic contex, given that the boiler plate is so minimal and presumably one has a built up a personal template over time. For blog posts and notes I see the appeal, since the boilerplate can be a hindrance to spontaneous writing.

Latex can't produce web output, which is increasingly a target I want.

Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX). The PDFs latex produces are probably the least accessible format available (much worse than a word proeuced pdf, or some html). This matters to me, and should matter more to other people (in my opinion).

Re: Pandoc

#106

Post by gitgud »

tambourine_man wrote: post #6

One nice trick that I use all the time is to convert html to md and back again in order to clean it. Anyway, pandoc is great.

Would that be a good way to sanitise user input? Like removing script tags etc...

Re: Pandoc

#107

Post by brennebeck »

foo101 wrote: post #102
BeetleB wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If one is going to write LaTeX code anyway, it seems easier and cleaner to use LaTeX all the way, move all the boilerplate along with the personal template to say, a file named preamble.tex, and \input{preamble.tex} in the documents. Not sure why you think it has to be that way. I author LaTeX documents using org mode. Org mode handles most of the boilerplate, and I can still put pretty much any custom LaTeX within…

It isn't clear to me whether you are saying that Pandoc is necessary or if you are saying that Pandoc is unnecessary and LaTeX alone is sufficient for all purposes. I think your parent comment was saying that LaTeX alone is sufficient. You also seem to be saying that LaTeX alone is sufficient while using Org mode. Would you please clarify if I am interpreting your comment correctly or not?

Pretty sure they are saying pandoc is unnecessary.

Re: Pandoc

#109

Post by voltagex_ »

CJefferson wrote: post #105
smohare wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never understood the impetus for not using full LaTeX in an academic contex, given that the boiler plate is so minimal and presumably one has a built up a personal template over time. For blog posts and notes I see the appeal, since the boilerplate can be a hindrance to spontaneous writing.

Latex can't produce web output, which is increasingly a target I want. Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX). The PDFs latex produces are probably the least accessible format available (much worse than a word proeuced pdf, or some html). This matters to me, and should matter more to other people (in my opinion).

>Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people

This sounds like it should definitely be a target of a grant. I guess most government organisations around the world are using Word et al, which isn't too bad these days accessibility wise (AFAIK).

Can you provide a small example of a LateX document that produces an inaccessible PDF?

Post reply on HN