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Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

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Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#91

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

AmazingTurtle wrote: post #72

Markdown, Quardown, Typst, this and that. This looks to LaTeX. All of this became so confusing and un-standardized - I went back to HTML+CSS.

You know what, while you're at it, I might as well bring it up. How about XML?

I haven't really tried writing large pieces of text in it but I am already seriously considering. All other alternatives are too complicated and have a learning curve that gets in the way of writing itself. With XML, I'd be able to define my own tags and run them by a parser later on to auto-generate indexable footnotes, and create my own ways of structuring text besides the usual ones (chapters, sections, etcetera). Has anyone tried this approach?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#92

Post by ehutch79 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #56
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 lab…

64kb of ram is enough for anyone.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#93

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#94

Post by blacklion »

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…

> Stuff like forms, invoices, flyers, handouts, leaflets, business cards -- an afterthought, at best.

It is because you can typeset beautiful long text algorithmically and all these small forms like invoices and flyers are more graphical design than typesetting: you need to place many small elements precisely, not relative to each other but to the edges of the page / optical centers / etc. It is not very convenient without WYSIWYG. Possible, yes, but will require many trial-and-error when in WYSIWYG layout program can be done from first try.

Think about tabloids too: text, which wraps around non-rectangualr images, cut-outs, etc. Hard to do without seeing what you do, only with text and coordinates.

Edit: typo test → text.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#96

Post by rmnclmnt »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #91
AmazingTurtle wrote: post #72

Markdown, Quardown, Typst, this and that. This looks to LaTeX. All of this became so confusing and un-standardized - I went back to HTML+CSS.

You know what, while you're at it, I might as well bring it up. How about XML? I haven't really tried writing large pieces of text in it but I am already seriously considering. All other alternatives are too complicated and have a learning curve that gets in the way of writing itself. With XML, I'd be able to define my own tags and run them by a parser later on to auto-generate indexable footnotes, and create my own…

Basically DocBook?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#98

Post by TacticalCoder »

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

People may not know it but at some point in the nineties you'd enter a bookstore and 95%+ of all the books and magazines were typeset using QuarkXPress.

Then Adobe's InDesign showed up in 1999 and things began to change.

FWIW I both wrote and typeset books myself (for a traditional publisher): I did most of them using QuarkXPress but I managed to sneak one I made with LaTeX (it was a hard sell to the publisher / printing press guys who were only ever using QuarkXPress). Also I was forced to heavily modify LaTeX templates to match exactly the one the publisher was using with QuarkXPress.

So yup when I read "Quarkdown is a modern Markdown-based typetting system" the first thing I think about is QuarkXPress: great memories of MacOS (8? then 9?, pre OS X for sure) and my Sony Trinitron monitor.

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#99

Post by blenderob »

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 HTML with tex4ht?

Re: Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system

#100

Post by andrewd18 »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #91
AmazingTurtle wrote: post #72

Markdown, Quardown, Typst, this and that. This looks to LaTeX. All of this became so confusing and un-standardized - I went back to HTML+CSS.

You know what, while you're at it, I might as well bring it up. How about XML? I haven't really tried writing large pieces of text in it but I am already seriously considering. All other alternatives are too complicated and have a learning curve that gets in the way of writing itself. With XML, I'd be able to define my own tags and run them by a parser later on to auto-generate indexable footnotes, and create my own…

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.
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