7 ms·

Author here! I'd like to take a second to point out that the audience I had in mind when writing this article was mostly my fellow classmates in college. In sch

• username223 9y ago
  Interesting, and a bit surprising. Back in the Triassic Age, I picked up LaTeX from an undergrad roommate because it was easier than writing up homework by hand, and because you can turn a basic ".txt" file into a ".tex" file with very few changes. I agree that Markdown and friends have their place, but they quickly reach their limits. You write that "Pandoc can take care of the presentation for us," but in my experience, Markdown and such will only get you as far as "good enough." If you want to typeset complicated equations, or print something more complicated than a novel, you need more powerful tools.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • Tarean 9y ago
    You can write markdown and pandoc will leave any latex fragments for the backend. This only works for latex based backends like pdf but it works great if you have some formulas. Code formatting and tabels are also vastly easier with pandoc.
    • username223 9y ago
      Yeah, LaTeX tables are a pain, so I usually generate them with a script and include them via "\input{...}". But I've come to rely on TeX macros to generate repeated things like fancy chapter intros, and on packages to customize page headers, etc. This stuff is not necessary for a homework assignment, but I doubt it's as easy to accomplish in Pandoc. On an unrelated note, I hadn't checked out Pandoc's output in awhile, and this bit from http://pandoc.org/demo/example13.pdf http://pandoc.org/demo/example13.pdf looks pretty bad: https://i.imgur.com/Kxy4mic.png https://i.imgur.com/Kxy4mic.png . Granted, the terrible word-breaking and spacing is TeX's fault, but typesetting usually seems to require dealing with a few special cases by hand. I wouldn't trust Pandoc, or any other program, to "take care of the presentation" without a bit of hand-holding.
• nanolith 9y ago
  I can second this. Markdown and Pandoc work quite well together. I write documents professionally using this setup. I do fall back to LaTeX for certain formatting, but it's actually quite easy to build pass-through filters so that raw LaTeX can be inserted when specialized formatting that can't be easily simulated in Markdown is required.
  • kvm000 9y ago
    I'd be very interested in any details of your approach that you could share. I added another comment to this thread with the details of what I've been working on for professional spec documents with markdown and rendering to PDF (testing with CSS now).
    • nanolith 9y ago
      It's relatively low-tech, but it does work. First, I have some scripts to preprocess the Markdown and extract custom markup that I have built to do things that Pandoc's Markdown can't, but that I can still easily inline in the document. For instance, I replaced the source code markup with a custom one that generates LaTeX formatted the way I want it formatted. I use Pandoc to output LaTeX. I then have a series of shell scripts to postprocess this LaTeX to insert pre-rendered figures, re-introduce the custom markup as rendered LaTeX, or to massage the output so that the document is laid out the way I expect. I'm planning to use this to write a book in the near future.
• erk__ 9y ago
  I have used latex to typeset most of my work at uni. but recently I began using org-mode, With a bit of knowlegde it is so much easier to structure my notes. And then it can export to a lot of differnt formats like latex.
  • z1mm32m4n 9y ago
    Yep, org-mode is really cool too!
• kerkeslager 9y ago
  I'd also add that while Markdown and LaTeX can do some of the same things, they're designed toward very different tasks. I've used both numerous times in my career, and I can't remember a case where it's been ambiguous which tool was more appropriate for the task. If it's going to be printed, you probably want LaTeX. If it's going to be rendered to a screen, you probably want Markdown. If it's going to be rendered to a screen and have math in it, you probably want Markdown with some LaTeX for the math. If it's going to be rendered to a screen and printed, better start looking for a job, because that project is going down in flames.
  • URSpider94 9y ago
    If you haven’t tried it yet, I encourage you to give Markdown + Pandoc a try for printed docs. Pandoc can take a LaTeX template and flow Markdown into it. I find Markdown formatting simpler to remember and execute than LaTeX, and there are a huge number of editors and live-preview apps that will let you validate your Markdown as you write. A few keystrokes, and you get a beautiful PDF document, flawlessly typeset in Computer Modern - and with a few more keystrokes, you can have an HTML page with exactly the same content. There is even a company, LeanPub, that is based on generating paper and e-books direct from Markdown.
    • dredmorbius 9y ago
      Makefiles address that. make html pdf This one has many OSXisms & wants some homebrew bits, but may give you a starting point: https://pastebin.com/raw/H43MKTCq https://pastebin.com/raw/H43MKTCq Referenced utility script: https://pastebin.com/raw/J6quT7Mj https://pastebin.com/raw/J6quT7Mj
      • URSpider94 9y ago
        Yup, having a default Markdown doc project that you clone is a big help. That way, you can include a Makefile, as well as embed LaTeX header info. For cases where you really need to share your doc with coworkers in an editable form, you can even define an MS Word target...
• Mindless2112 9y ago
  I was also required to typeset homework for some classes in college, but I used LyX [1] instead and never really learned how to typeset a whole document. I picked up the equation syntax though. [1] http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/
  • kqr 9y ago
    LaTeX equation syntax is a gateway drug to heavier typesetting systems. I also started out at maths pastebins when wanting to explain things to others in a readable way.
• isatty 9y ago
  When I was in uni I used Latex to format work that had math and needed better organization (theses, publication papers). For simpler stuff like comp sci assignments I did it in markdown and ran it through pandoc.
• davesque 9y ago
  I'm a bit confused by this. As I see it, LaTeX can do everything that Markdown can before things get complicated. Where LaTeX does get complicated (e.g. when designing figures or drawings), Markdown doesn't offer any advantage or even any functionality. For composing simple documents or outlines and doing typesetting of equations, LaTeX has some boilerplate but it's really not that much.
  • kqr 9y ago
    I'm not sure... I think you raise a good point, and I would have the same thing as you before I started writing in Org and exporting to LaTeX, instead of a) writing in LaTeX directly, or b) drafting/outlining in Org and rewriting the final copy in LaTeX. Now I think exporting from Org is so much easier.
  • quanticle 9y ago
    LaTeX in my experience, is worse than markdown for one crucial use case: formatting code. Formatting large blocks of monospaced text (especially monospaced text that includes character sequences that can be interpreted as LaTeX commands) has always been kind of a chore. In markdown, on the other hand, it's as simple as enclosing the text between two sets of triple-backticks (```).
    • tincholio 9y ago
      \usepackage{listings} \begin{lstlisting} your code here \end{lstlisting} That's not much harder, is it? Plus, it has a ton of other functionalities you might want.
      • marten-de-vries 9y ago
        Now add syntax highlighting. In Markdown, it's trivial (```language-name), in LaTeX, you're going to have to define a style. LaTeX is more flexible, but it does come at a cost.
        • tincholio 9y ago
• sureaboutthis 9y ago
  Thank you for the clarification. This should be top posted to avoid a lot of the posts that have already occurred. LaTeX is far more encompassing than Markdown will ever be.