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Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

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Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#51

Post by skwee357 »

promiseofbeans wrote: post #28
skwee357 wrote: post #18

This looks very interesting and more approachable than Typst. As some who uses headless chrome to turn html into pdf (for invoices), I have been looking for something simpler and faster. I tried typst, but it felt messy to me. I wonder if quarkdown offers more streamlined experience

WEasyPrint is great for generating invoices from html! https://weasyprint.org/ Also the only good implementation of web layout/rendering I've seen done in python.

Whats the difference between them and running a headless chrome docker container?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#52

Post by rendaw »

andy12_ wrote: post #48
rendaw wrote: post #25

This, Typst, etc etc are primarily typesetting systems for papers . I would love alternatives to HTML or whatever, but I tried Typst too and it's very clear that the authors only really care about typesetting for papers and other long form prose. Stuff like forms, invoices, flyers, handouts, leaflets, business cards -- an afterthought, at best. Edit: Actually I was thinking of Sile not Typst, but I think the same app…

Is there any reason why you can't use Typst for any of the stuff you mentioned? I can't see why you couldn't (except for interactive forms, which is already being worked on [1]. The pdf-writer low-level backend seems to have already implemented support for form fields, so it seems like a matter of time until it is implemented in Typst). [1] https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/1765

I believe you can do those sorts of layouts in Typst (and Latex, and Sile!), but it's about how far out of the way you have to go and how much you fight the system in the process. I don't see any examples of Typst doing anything other than papers, I believe for good reason.

To be clear, I mean from a design perspective. Like take a print copy of Wired... how hard would it be to replicate any of those pages? Without using other software (aside from maybe cutting up stock photos). I can format scientific papers in HTML and it's not too hard, I can also format a cookbook, and it's not that hard. It's not great either!

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#53

Post by skwee357 »

dev_l1x_be wrote: post #23
skwee357 wrote: post #18

This looks very interesting and more approachable than Typst. As some who uses headless chrome to turn html into pdf (for invoices), I have been looking for something simpler and faster. I tried typst, but it felt messy to me. I wonder if quarkdown offers more streamlined experience

> I tried typst, but it felt messy to me. What exactly is messy about Typst?

The syntax feels complicated. Maybe I just don't have enough patience for learning a typesetting syntax (I never worked with Latex before).

On top of that, there is no easy way to create a template. For example, I want an invoice template which I can reuse with different data. Theoretically, I can create a typ file for the template, and define the invoice as a function which I then call from a string with, say, json data. It seems great as web service, but not as a library I can use from, say, Rust.

And the type system is a bit confusing. I can define basic types like numbers or string, but when it comes to structs, they don't seem to have support for that.

I find it easier to create a handlebars template, and feed the HTML to headless chrome printing service, which will output a PDF for me. It's not scalable for high volume, but good enough for my needs (takes about 2-3 seconds to generate PDF).

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#54

Post by silvestrov » 

    .function {greet}

    .greet {world} from:{iamgio}
I strongly suggest that the greet call uses a slightly different syntax (e.g. two dots) as the system otherwise can't introduce new keywords without risking conflict with function names in existing documents.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#55

Post by silveraxe93 »

freefrog334433 wrote: post #40

I've started using presenterm for markdown presentations. Given that markdown is just a format, a comprehensive comparison should find the tools using markdown to export to pdf and epub.

Do you know how it compares to marp? I've been using it last year and it's pretty nice. I hadn't heard about presenterm before.

- https://marp.app/

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#56

Post by zelphirkalt »

silvestrov wrote: post #54

.function {greet} .greet {world} from:{iamgio} I strongly suggest that the greet call uses a slightly different syntax (e.g. two dots) as the system otherwise can't introduce new keywords without risking conflict with function names in existing documents.

Does it need more keywords? This syntax reminds me of Smalltalk syntax a little and Smalltalk famously got away with merely 6 keywords. I didn't check the syntax in detail for quarkdown, and I don't expect it to be as well thought out as Smalltalk, but it is quite possible to get away with only few keywords. Question is then how complete their concept is right now. Also there could be a versioning mechanism, that labels a document as for a specific version of Quarkdown.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#57

Post by zelphirkalt »

tecleandor wrote: post #16
account-5 wrote: post #5

How is this different from Quarto [0]? Quite similar in name, same extension, appears the same aims, but at the minute less functionality. [0] https://quarto.org/

I guess that the similarity of the names come from different places, and in this case might be a remembrance of QuarkXPress. It's convergent evolution! :D

I guessed the name derived as follows: Quarks as the smallest particles, a view in most detail, the building blocks of things. Typesetting as the lowest level of abstraction for creating a document, "down" from Markdown.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#60

Post by junon »

structural wrote: post #2

Would be interesting to see a compare and contrast between this and Typst, which has gotten a lot of attention recently. Kinda surprising that it isn't mentioned in their feature comparison matrix at all.

Last I checked Typst can't emit HTML.
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