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This question may be a bit naive, but it comes from somebody who has never used asciidoc but used a lot of LaTeX to make reports, poster, presentations, ... Wh

This question may be a bit naive, but it comes from somebody who has never used asciidoc but used a lot of LaTeX to make reports, poster, presentations, ... Why are you using asciidoc to write a book, instead of LaTeX ? I see the advantage of using this for documentation, but for an entire book ?

qznc 5y ago
My guess: To convert it into an ebook.
- baby 5y ago
  You can convert latex into ebooks I believe, it’s just completely overkill most of the time.
StevePerkins 5y ago
LaTeX is pretty imposing for non-academic newbies. And if you're not writing a book that includes a bibliography or a lot of complex math equations, then it's arguably overkill. On the other hand, if you already know the gist of Markdown, then you could pick up reStructuredText or AsciiDoc in less than an hour. They're more feature-rich than markdown, without adding too much squeeze for the juice.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I like to use Markdown for authoring (it's a lot simpler than LaTeX!), but use Pandoc to convert to PDF (which uses a LaTeX template). If needed, you can also sprinkle the Markdown with LaTeX, such as to enforce page breaks at specific points.
baby 5y ago
There’s no point using latex if your book has almost no formulas. If your book has a lot of them, then yes I would say using latex makes sense.
- zoomablemind 5y ago
  > There’s no point using latex if your book has almost no formulas... In a book one often needs to keep track of local references (to figures, tables, sections, etc). How this could be reasonably done in markdown flavors?
  - dalai 5y ago
    Asciidoc already supports that. You don’t even need to differentiate in the syntax, it knows when you are referring to a table, a figure, a section, code listing, etc.
    - zelphirkalt 5y ago
      And in reStructuredText you can make any place in your document a "source" and any place a "sink" of a reference. Is it the same in AsciiDoc, or are only special things like listings etc. referencable?
Sr_developer 5y ago
LaTeX books are ugly. We need an open source alternative to https://www.princexml.com/samples/ https://www.princexml.com/samples/ Or at least one not that expensive.
- GiovanniP 5y ago
  > We need an open source alternative to https://www.princexml.com/samples/ https://www.princexml.com/samples/ TeXmacs: https://www.texmacs.org https://www.texmacs.org As far as I know e.g. this book https://www.editions-ellipses.fr/accueil/4856-le-petit-python-aide-memoire-pour-python-3-9782340017863.html https://www.editions-ellipses.fr/accueil/4856-le-petit-pytho... has been written with TeXmacs, and antoher is in preparation by the same author. Also, Joris van der Hoeven has written a guide to TeXmacs ("The Jolly Writer") using TeXmacs
41b696ef1113 5y ago
Having written my fair share of Latex, I will chime in that I despise the language. Verbose, too many special characters I need to escape (copy and pasting text becomes a chore), slow to compile, mystery number of compilation steps, and horrible debugability. None of these are showstoppers, but quite a few paper cuts that leave me reaching for Latex only as a last resort. There are tooling and workflows one can adopt to minimize the pain, but it requires a lot of setup if I just want to get some text on a page. I have stupidly optimistic hopes that something like [Skribilo](https://www.nongnu.org/skribilo/ https://www.nongnu.org/skribilo/) would take over in this space, but I know that is foolhardy. Would require a generation of physicists and mathematicians to give up their hard-won Latex knowledge.
zelphirkalt 5y ago
The answer is in my opinion the following: You use LaTeX when you have to for some specific thing, perhaps equations, but at other times, you can stick with the simpler syntax of (AsciiDoc|reStructuredText|Org-Mode). That's what I do at least.

qznc 5y ago

My guess: To convert it into an ebook.

baby 5y ago
You can convert latex into ebooks I believe, it’s just completely overkill most of the time.

StevePerkins 5y ago

LaTeX is pretty imposing for non-academic newbies. And if you're not writing a book that includes a bibliography or a lot of complex math equations, then it's arguably overkill. On the other hand, if you already know the gist of Markdown, then you could pick up reStructuredText or AsciiDoc in less than an hour. They're more feature-rich than markdown, without adding too much squeeze for the juice.

GordonS 5y ago
I like to use Markdown for authoring (it's a lot simpler than LaTeX!), but use Pandoc to convert to PDF (which uses a LaTeX template). If needed, you can also sprinkle the Markdown with LaTeX, such as to enforce page breaks at specific points.

baby 5y ago

There’s no point using latex if your book has almost no formulas. If your book has a lot of them, then yes I would say using latex makes sense.

zoomablemind 5y ago
> There’s no point using latex if your book has almost no formulas... In a book one often needs to keep track of local references (to figures, tables, sections, etc). How this could be reasonably done in markdown flavors?
- dalai 5y ago
  Asciidoc already supports that. You don’t even need to differentiate in the syntax, it knows when you are referring to a table, a figure, a section, code listing, etc.
  - zelphirkalt 5y ago
    And in reStructuredText you can make any place in your document a "source" and any place a "sink" of a reference. Is it the same in AsciiDoc, or are only special things like listings etc. referencable?

Sr_developer 5y ago

LaTeX books are ugly. We need an open source alternative to https://www.princexml.com/samples/ https://www.princexml.com/samples/ Or at least one not that expensive.

GiovanniP 5y ago
> We need an open source alternative to https://www.princexml.com/samples/ https://www.princexml.com/samples/ TeXmacs: https://www.texmacs.org https://www.texmacs.org As far as I know e.g. this book https://www.editions-ellipses.fr/accueil/4856-le-petit-python-aide-memoire-pour-python-3-9782340017863.html https://www.editions-ellipses.fr/accueil/4856-le-petit-pytho... has been written with TeXmacs, and antoher is in preparation by the same author. Also, Joris van der Hoeven has written a guide to TeXmacs ("The Jolly Writer") using TeXmacs

41b696ef1113 5y ago

Having written my fair share of Latex, I will chime in that I despise the language. Verbose, too many special characters I need to escape (copy and pasting text becomes a chore), slow to compile, mystery number of compilation steps, and horrible debugability. None of these are showstoppers, but quite a few paper cuts that leave me reaching for Latex only as a last resort. There are tooling and workflows one can adopt to minimize the pain, but it requires a lot of setup if I just want to get some text on a page. I have stupidly optimistic hopes that something like [Skribilo](https://www.nongnu.org/skribilo/ https://www.nongnu.org/skribilo/) would take over in this space, but I know that is foolhardy. Would require a generation of physicists and mathematicians to give up their hard-won Latex knowledge.

zelphirkalt 5y ago

The answer is in my opinion the following: You use LaTeX when you have to for some specific thing, perhaps equations, but at other times, you can stick with the simpler syntax of (AsciiDoc|reStructuredText|Org-Mode). That's what I do at least.