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A Scholarly Markdown

scholarlymarkdown.com

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Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#31
post #6

This thing is certainly needed (vide this discussion: https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup-language-utAjFcYuv... ), but what would be really convincing is examples (or I am missing them?). As a side note, a lot of Markdown + LaTeX + Code can be done in IPython Notebook. (Though, there are some things absent, like referencing citations or other equations).

I read your link and, per my main comment, I'm pretty sure AsciiDoc answers 99% of your needs. http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/#_overview_and_examples

Cool! Any examples of using AsciiDoc for math or scientific notes? (I.e. with formulae, references...)

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#32
post #22
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, the main feature is being able to plug math formulas in, rather than formatting documents. It allows you to focus on your content (one feature of Markdown) while still being able to write mathematics.

"It allows you to focus on your content (one feature of Markdown) while still being able to write mathematics." That's what LaTeX does too. Its markup, generally, is semantic.

In my experience LaTeX is quite poor at separating content from presentation, at least when you're unwilling to rely on the default styles. All the layout commands are context-sensitive, so I often end up writing presentation code in the middle of my content, or accidentally breaking the layout by moving content around.

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#33
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your link and, per my main comment, I'm pretty sure AsciiDoc answers 99% of your needs. http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/#_overview_and_examples

Cool! Any examples of using AsciiDoc for math or scientific notes? (I.e. with formulae, references...)

Well here's some formulae:

    http://www.noteshare.io/section/the-fundamental-class-of-projective-space
    http://asciidoctor.org/docs/user-manual/#using-multiple-stem-interpreters
    http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/latex-filter.html
    http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/example/dblatex/example_mathml.pdf
As for references, it has it's own lightweight bibliography system out of the box, but there's a plugin[0] for BibTeX too, and DocBook has full-on support for BibTeX so it's just a matter of tooling. AsciiDoc gives you DocBook, and DocBook gives you pretty much everything.[1] The whole thing is completely extensible at multiple levels (macros, XSL stylesheets), so adding any essential features it doesn't already have is certainly much simpler than starting from scratch!

    [0]: https://github.com/petercrlane/asciidoc-bib
    [1]: http://pub.hdcrd.com/kb/Dev/Documention/LaTeX/Tool/Dblatex%20%28DocBook%20to%20LaTeX%20Publishing%29/0.3/manual.pdf

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#34

Why? This really feels like cramming a square peg into a round hole. Anytime anyone wants something more complex than simply lightly formatted text they will have to use other tool (LaTeX), so why not just use LaTeX in the first place?

Alternatively you can use org-mode and extend the document with latex where appropriate.

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#35
post #24

My spontaneous reaction is: Why don't use the existing MediaWiki syntax? It has gone through the test of years (decades?) of real-life needs, has support for (latex) formulae, everything you might need around images and references etc, one of the most powerful template systems I've ever seen, and the list goes on and on. Additionally there is a very stable, performant and flexible reference implementation implemented…

MediaWiki syntax is incredibly grody ('''bold''' / ''italic'', tables, template logic, etc), and has exactly one implementation in common usage (MediaWiki itself -- written in PHP, and horribly convoluted), and has no formal specification. The diff feature you're referencing as a "syntax-highlighted diff" is a simple diff of the source -- it's entirely ignorant of formatting, and the XML export is similarly just an export of the raw source.

Nobody likes MediaWiki syntax, not even its own users. It's awful. The only reason it's still used at Wikipedia is because there's too much content to reasonably convert.

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#36
Alot of interesting work, judging from the site, but this still feels like reinventing the wheel to me. In addition to AsciiDoc, there's MultiMarkdown (http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/features/ feature list is nearly identical), and probably another 3-4 that I haven't come across.

Of course, having spent the past few months writing an app that basically reinvents this same wheel (http://www.eqeditor.com/writer/) I suppose I'm in good company.

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in fundamental disagreement with the principle behind CommonMark. They prioritize standardization over practical usability, and for that reason people will keep splintering markdown. For example, they do not plan to add syntax highlighting blocks (the ```some code``` on GitHub) to their implementation, because they believe that it is outside the scope of markdown. Then, because a lot of people actually need this…

"For example, they do not plan to add syntax highlighting blocks (the ```some code``` on GitHub) to their implementation, because they believe that it is outside the scope of markdown." To correct the record, fenced code blocks have been there from the beginning: http://spec.commonmark.org/0.18/#fenced-code-blocks .

I guess many has changed since I last looked at CommonMark and perhaps the developers are pragmatic after all. I stand corrected and will try out their implementations now.

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#38

Alot of interesting work, judging from the site, but this still feels like reinventing the wheel to me. In addition to AsciiDoc, there's MultiMarkdown ( http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/features/ feature list is nearly identical), and probably another 3-4 that I haven't come across. Of course, having spent the past few months writing an app that basically reinvents this same wheel ( http://www.eqeditor.com/wri…

Another thing I'm curious about is how the ScholarlyMarkdown authors would go about trying to get papers formatted in this way to go into a database like PubMed but that's pretty far down the track, and not addressed by any of the other solutions either.

Re: A Scholarly Markdown

#40
If you want me (as an academic) to use ScholarlyMarkdown, then you can't force my collaborators to use ScholarlyMarkdown as a consequence.

There should be a nice ScholarlyMarkdown -> LaTeX cross compiler for starting simple documents in TeX and then sharing with collaborators (pick some obvious defaults or allow a config file to get fancy). But more importantly, if I am joining a project that already has a bunch of LaTeX wizardry going on, I should be able to seamlessly and implicitly edit the text parts in ScholarlyMarkdown without my collaborators knowing.

Can ScholarlyMarkdown do this? If not then I'm not really interested.

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