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But my God is it hard to find anything non-distracting. I think MS Word is the best for me, but still. I would prefer Markdown, but this is just terrible for ac

by _glass 4y ago

But my God is it hard to find anything non-distracting. I think MS Word is the best for me, but still. I would prefer Markdown, but this is just terrible for academia. I tried AsciiDoc, but again, nothing is more distracting than AsciiDoc, expect for the horrible, cruel syntax of LaTex. Scrivener is perfect, except, EXCEPT there is no integration with Zotero, or any reference manager. So I am left with MS Word, which is horrible for a 200 page file. Splitting up the file just clutters the workflow of browsing the whole document. I am trying to let go of tools, but there is no alternative fulfilling the minimal requirements.

2b3a51 4y ago
Would separating the stages of making a document help at all? A list of references (on paper?) then banging out a draft using anything at all and then editing the language, finally assembling the paper with its apparatus. Disclaimer: I've never written anything as long as 200 pages
- _glass 4y ago
  Yes, actually that's how I am working right now. But I was just doing a paper on the side just in Word with Zotero, and it really helps to have a reference manager.
jcparkyn 4y ago
Have you tried LyX? It doesn't have all the advantages of plaintext and it's still easy to get distracted, but I find it's quite good at getting out of your way when you're not too worried about specific formatting, and it still has all the power of LaTeX when you need it.
teleforce 4y ago
Have you tried TeXmacs? It's neither TeX nor it's Emacs clone. It's WYSIWYG scientific editing platform. Documents created can be saved in TeXmacs, Xml, Scheme, PDF or Postscript. Converters exist for TeX/LaTeX and HTML/MathML. It can also be used as a graphical front-end for other computer algebra, numerical analysis, statistics software[1]. [1]https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html

by _glass 4y ago

2b3a51 4y ago

Would separating the stages of making a document help at all? A list of references (on paper?) then banging out a draft using anything at all and then editing the language, finally assembling the paper with its apparatus. Disclaimer: I've never written anything as long as 200 pages

_glass 4y ago
Yes, actually that's how I am working right now. But I was just doing a paper on the side just in Word with Zotero, and it really helps to have a reference manager.

jcparkyn 4y ago

Have you tried LyX? It doesn't have all the advantages of plaintext and it's still easy to get distracted, but I find it's quite good at getting out of your way when you're not too worried about specific formatting, and it still has all the power of LaTeX when you need it.

teleforce 4y ago

Have you tried TeXmacs? It's neither TeX nor it's Emacs clone. It's WYSIWYG scientific editing platform. Documents created can be saved in TeXmacs, Xml, Scheme, PDF or Postscript. Converters exist for TeX/LaTeX and HTML/MathML. It can also be used as a graphical front-end for other computer algebra, numerical analysis, statistics software[1]. [1]https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html