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I think the most interesting thing about the article isn't the solution. It's the problem: how do you organize a long piece of writing (O(100k) words) into logi
by dlkf 8y ago
I think the most interesting thing about the article isn't the solution. It's the problem: how do you organize a long piece of writing (O(100k) words) into logical units whose length isn't dictated in advance, and which don't force some kind of manual global refactor (e.g. renumbering chapters) every time a change is made.
The author's solution (one big file created with Vim) is reasonable and seems to work well for him. However, it seems to trade modularity/reusability. I'd be interested to hear about a microcontent solution (and the attendant tooling) that doesn't make this tradeoff. Or if I'm wrong about the tradeoff, I'd like to hear why.
- nickjj 8y agoI think it depends on what you're working on. When it comes to creating a course, there really is no way to reuse those files in a way that makes sense. A course on Docker and Flask have nothing in common for example. Also, a course's writing isn't the only aspect. There's video too. Each video is its own individual unit of output. Once a course is delivered on video, you really can't go back and start adding in new lessons to the middle because your previously recorded videos depend on things being in the old order. When you record lesson 103 and it expects code to exist in folder 103/ in a git repo, you can't just add a new lesson after 57 because now 103 becomes 104 and it throws everything off. So in my case, once I complete the course, its TOC is set in stone. Those numbers won't change, but I want the flexibility to change them as I actively make the course which is when they change a lot.
- Certhas 8y agoThe approach really makes little sense to me to be honest. Latex or any competent Text processing tool should take care of most of these needs. As far as I know the tech the OP uses is used almost nowhere where people work with large bodies of text, meaning the editing and typesetting industry.
- codeduck 8y agoAnd when LaTeX is fronted by Lyx, it really is as easy as a dream. I use Lyx for all my documentation or writing for which Markdown is insufficiently rich.
- snowstorm82 8y agoI would most likely go with Semver prefixed dir & md-files. Then concatenate with python + transform with Pandoc. It was not bad when we (3persons) were doing requirements documentation in a way that our changes are backed by git remote.
- jeffwass 8y agoScrivener. I’m using it for my novel (currently 100k words). You literally drag and drop folders and chapters and sections, can view them as ordered or move around in cork board mode, etc. That said, I used LaTeX for my PhD thesis.