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Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

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Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#221

Post by Onawa »

bryanhogan wrote: post #203

Interested in this! Recently wrote a thesis. Wanted to use markdown, but that had too many limitations. After learning and using LaTeX for a bit I got used to it, but the overall experience of setting it up and its usability leaves a lot of room for improvements. But on the other hand it's established in academic writing. Do hope to see something based on markdown be able to replace LaTeX in the future.

Quarto is probably what you're looking for. It's what we've been using for scientific publications in gov science research labs the past couple of years. Can output to LaTeX and incorporate templates and such.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#222

Post by Onawa »

grahameb wrote: post #171
fmoralesc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use typst locally and bypass the commercial bits. It is really easy to create different kinds of documents with it. I have been using it to create slides and handouts, and for that I already find it much easier to use than the alternatives.

Can you make slides and handouts from the same primary document? That'd save me an inordinate amount of time for some church use-cases.

Look at Quarto. Markdown input, basically any output you want, including HTML, PDF, DOCX, PPTX, etc... All from the same input. Reuse text chunks, use variables, templates, and more. Then just run 'quarto render'.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#223

Post by deppep »

krick wrote: post #185

Since 70% of comments under each of these posts are always "why not LaTeX?!", I want to start by reaffirming: yes, I do want a modern Markdown-based typesetting system. There even is a place of several of them. It would be absolutely nice to replace LaTeX, simply because it's old trash with remarkably inconvenient syntax, so, yes, a system with full control over markup is desirable. And if it necessarily increases ve…

LaTeX is not "old trash". It's one of the best piece of software ever written. Just don't import bs in your document.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#224

Post by zzo38computer »

Some things I would want to see in a typesetting system:

- Having a typesetting quality and control like TeX does, including mathematical typesetting, although improvements could be made to that, too. (I think I would also like the syntax more like TeX has)

- You can include PostScript codes within the document which can run during the typesetting process (rather than only during output), therefore allowing it to affect decisions of page breaks, etc, as well as allowing PostScript to draw diagrams and control text rendering. (I had written a PostScript program to load PK fonts, so that would make it possible to use PK fonts from TeX as well.)

- Full support for non-Unicode text (without converting it internally to Unicode). (It is OK if it also supports Unicode as long as the code to support Unicode is avoided when not using it (in the entire document or in a part of it).)

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#225

Post by Onawa »

kzrdude wrote: post #194
Onawa wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe look at Quarto? Almost every project I start now begins with `quarto project create`. From there I can pivot the material into HTML, .docx, PDF, .PPTX, Typst, LaTeX, and all of them simultaneously.

Which editor or environment do you use to edit these?

VSCode and RStudio Desktop both have visual editor components, although they are not perfect. Positron is another editor that is data science specific built on top of VSCode that has Quarto rendering support.

There isn't an 'on-the-fly' rendering component for Quarto per se, but using the preview mode it will re-render a preview watching for file changes. A nice GUI editor for Quarto is definitely something people have been asking for. Closest equivalent would probably be Overleaf or Typst web editors?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#226

Post by cAtte_ »

zzo38computer wrote: post #224

Some things I would want to see in a typesetting system: - Having a typesetting quality and control like TeX does, including mathematical typesetting, although improvements could be made to that, too. (I think I would also like the syntax more like TeX has) - You can include PostScript codes within the document which can run during the typesetting process (rather than only during output), therefore allowing it to aff…

do you have some sort of ethical opposition to unicode?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#227

Post by petalmind »

zzo38computer wrote: post #224

Some things I would want to see in a typesetting system: - Having a typesetting quality and control like TeX does, including mathematical typesetting, although improvements could be made to that, too. (I think I would also like the syntax more like TeX has) - You can include PostScript codes within the document which can run during the typesetting process (rather than only during output), therefore allowing it to aff…

What is "non-Unicode" text exactly?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#228

Post by zzo38computer »

cAtte_ wrote: post #226
zzo38computer wrote: post #224

Some things I would want to see in a typesetting system: - Having a typesetting quality and control like TeX does, including mathematical typesetting, although improvements could be made to that, too. (I think I would also like the syntax more like TeX has) - You can include PostScript codes within the document which can run during the typesetting process (rather than only during output), therefore allowing it to aff…

do you have some sort of ethical opposition to unicode?

I think Unicode is messy and is not the best way to do i18n and m17n and l10n and a11y and many other things (although there are also problems with existing implementations that do not have to do with the character set, the character set is one of the problems), and I also think that it is not good to insist on using one character set for everything (especially if that character set is Unicode).

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, UTF-EBCDIC, etc are encodings of Unicode. EUC-JP is not an encoding of a subset of Unicode; it is an encoding of JIS, which is a different character set. The PC character set is not a subset of Unicode; it is the PC character set. Being able to be mapped to Unicode in some cases does not make it Unicode (nor does it mean that these mappings are necessarily "clean", but even if they are, that still wouldn't make non-Unicode character sets to be (subsets of, or even supersets of) Unicode).

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#229

Post by yannis »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #198
tincholio wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the standard in most hard science fields. Also common in some humanities, too.

Can I ask which humanities? I'm probably showing my bias here, but I'm (respectfully) surprised that, say, poets would want to work in LaTeX :)

Linguistics and many of its subbranches. Historians, archaeologists and to be honest LaTeX is great for poetry.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#230

Post by zzo38computer »

petalmind wrote: post #227
zzo38computer wrote: post #224

Some things I would want to see in a typesetting system: - Having a typesetting quality and control like TeX does, including mathematical typesetting, although improvements could be made to that, too. (I think I would also like the syntax more like TeX has) - You can include PostScript codes within the document which can run during the typesetting process (rather than only during output), therefore allowing it to aff…

What is "non-Unicode" text exactly?

Text that uses character sets other than Unicode.
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