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Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

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Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#241

Post by kccqzy »

blenderob wrote: post #99

Is the comparison table accurate? - https://github.com/iamgio/quarkdown#comparison Surely LaTeX has full scripting ability even though I wouldn't wish such a punishment on anyone. Surely Quarkdown's gibberish like syntax is not more concise and more readable than Typst? And surely the learning curve is not easier than Typst? I'd say the learning curve is more or less the same as Typst. Surely LaTeX can also produce H…

I mean one can take a quick look at what has been accomplished in TikZ and pgf to figure LaTeX and plain TeX's scripting ability.

The comparison table is clearly inaccurate.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#243

Post by SirHumphrey »

behnamoh wrote: post #145
coliveira wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why these things don't go anywhere. If I need to write formatting details, it is better to use LaTeX which is a well-tested and stable language that will last for another 30 years.

Plus, with Latex you can use LLMs as assistants and they do a great job thanks to so much Latex data they've seen in training.

And at least I can be sure that any math expression can be written somehow in latex, no mater how bizarre.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#244

Post by infogulch »

I've recently started rewriting basic process documentation into markdown, which also needs to be printed with a simple header and footer. I found that rendering to html, adding pagedjs cdn, and adding a styled header & footer tags looks and prints great already.

It's surprising how close html & css are to being a pretty good layout system.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#245

Post by rmnclmnt »

drob518 wrote: post #119
rmnclmnt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically DocBook?

Exactly. Seems like we already invented that but it didn’t really catch fire.

Yeah last time I touched it was during an internship 15 years ago, the few memories I recall were not enjoyment at all (however I was using LaTeX everywhere at the time).

Writing documentation as XML is powerful but not enjoyable at all I guess

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#246

Post by sureglymop »

blenderob wrote: post #162
sureglymop wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'll have to install and keep those packages somewhere on your system. And maybe a few months from now after your latex distribution got updated by the system your document suddenly no longer compiles. What I want is something like npm-like package management for this, where the packages are just kept there next to the document. I don't care if I'll have a package 20 times on my system either, storage hasn't…

> And maybe a few months from now after your latex distribution got updated by the system your document suddenly no longer compiles. I'm using LaTeX 2e for 25+ years. This has literally never happened to me. If that's not stability, I don't know what is. LaTeX documents I wrote in my grad days still compile for me. I just checked and it does. I do keep the dependency packages myself in my folder. Has this issue ever…

It happened to me because I had to use the templates and document classes provided by my university, which themselves rely on a bunch of packages I wouldn't have installed myself.

My next step was to just try doing the build in containers but I even ran into it there once because I accidentally pulled a newer image...

But it's just anecdotally. Maybe I really was holding it all wrong.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#247

Post by kortex »

zzo38computer wrote: post #228
cAtte_ wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So how does going back to multiple incompatible character sets help anything?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#248

Post by RollingRo11 »

I want to move on from LaTeX syntax as much as the next person (hard to read, etc.),

But as a consumer/user, wouldn't a more uniform syntax (large adoption of Typst, etc) be preferable to having multiple different typesetting systems. I feel like the prevailing aspect of LaTeX is its universality?

(Then again, who hates options).

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#249

Post by andrewd18 »

starkparker wrote: post #151
andrewd18 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional tech writer here: We use GitHub and a tool called OxygenXML to write docs-as-code in an XML DTD called "DITA". It's a hefty IBM invention from the early aughts, but it covers every use case I've thrown at it, from small documentation sets to multi-thousand-page monsters. Supports PDF, HTML, Word, and many other output types.

DITA's so great at everything _except contributions from non-tech writers_ that half of my career has involved migrating tech writing stacks that use it to Markdown/SSGs in git repos. DITA's benefits require a certain scale that most tech companies never achieve. And the Open Toolkit is a nightmare piece of software.

Agreed, and we use Markdown where we can. But inevitably some product manager comes along and demands tables inside tables or embedded reuse of content... and it's back to DITA.

OxygenXML makes the OT much more manageable. I haven't had to touch an OT XSL transform in a few years now. Worth every penny.

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