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I did most of my nursing school papers in LaTeX after finding APA7 formatting and citations difficult to comply with on a short deadline. I found that the heada

I did most of my nursing school papers in LaTeX after finding APA7 formatting and citations difficult to comply with on a short deadline. I found that the headaches of the tools and of learning the many small packages far outweigh the benefits of separation of layout and content, and I've since uninstalled TeX Live. For anyone less inclined to tinker, I hope that the process of installing TeX Live would scare them away before the damage can be done. If the default behavior of a package manager is to download the entire repository, it's a sign of serious issues with the ecosystem. EDIT: Markdown on the other hand is far too simple to format formal writing. It was never the intention of Markdown to be that.

thangalin 4y ago
> EDIT: Markdown on the other hand is far too simple to format formal writing. It was never the intention of Markdown to be that. Here are some Markdown documents I've written and/or typeset using ConTeXt: * https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf * https://www.docdroid.net/VQU9VEZ/design-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/VQU9VEZ/design-pdf * https://www.docdroid.net/rHlVyPV/autonoma-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/rHlVyPV/autonoma-pdf * https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdown-part-8/jekyll-hyde.pdf https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdow... My Typesetting Markdown series[0] does a deep dive into how to keep content and presentation separate, which is much easier using ConTeXt than LaTeX, IMO. Part 8 of the series delves into typesetting annotations. As for TeX Live, I agree. The instructions for installing ConTeXt on Windows is basically: download, unzip, run two batch files.[1] [0]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/ https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/ [1]: https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Installation https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Installation
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  Your work is spectacular. In particular that first link is striking. Unfortunately your series loses me with how it introduces the build system first rather than tools. That is not a trivial shell script or toolchain for me, and certainly is too much for someone looking for a Word replacement. Looking at further pages, it becomes less Markdown and more a home-grown formatting system that has Markdown as a subset. That said, ConTeXt looks great for my purposes! So much more is done out-of-the-box, the documentation is well-laid out, and I can see looking at its main pages how I could set up formatting for a style guide myself, unlike LaTeX. Thank you.
  - thangalin 4y ago
    > That is not a trivial shell script or toolchain for me, and certainly is too much for someone looking for a Word replacement. Absolutely. I developed KeenWrite[0], a free and open source desktop editor, to replace those shell scripts with a graphical user interface and command-line interface[1]. There are several starter themes you can use, as well.[2] [0]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite [1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/cmd.md https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/cmd... [2]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/ https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Those are outstanding examples, and should put to paid any assertions that Markdown cannot be used for serious work. I'm seeing you'd submitted an eight-part series, "Typesetting Markdown", first part here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20003913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20003913 That got no traction on HN, but I'd love to see that included as a 2nd-chance pool or submitted feature.

thangalin 4y ago

> EDIT: Markdown on the other hand is far too simple to format formal writing. It was never the intention of Markdown to be that. Here are some Markdown documents I've written and/or typeset using ConTeXt: * https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf * https://www.docdroid.net/VQU9VEZ/design-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/VQU9VEZ/design-pdf * https://www.docdroid.net/rHlVyPV/autonoma-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/rHlVyPV/autonoma-pdf * https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdown-part-8/jekyll-hyde.pdf https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdow... My Typesetting Markdown series[0] does a deep dive into how to keep content and presentation separate, which is much easier using ConTeXt than LaTeX, IMO. Part 8 of the series delves into typesetting annotations. As for TeX Live, I agree. The instructions for installing ConTeXt on Windows is basically: download, unzip, run two batch files.[1] [0]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/ https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/ [1]: https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Installation https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Installation

shadowofneptune 4y ago
Your work is spectacular. In particular that first link is striking. Unfortunately your series loses me with how it introduces the build system first rather than tools. That is not a trivial shell script or toolchain for me, and certainly is too much for someone looking for a Word replacement. Looking at further pages, it becomes less Markdown and more a home-grown formatting system that has Markdown as a subset. That said, ConTeXt looks great for my purposes! So much more is done out-of-the-box, the documentation is well-laid out, and I can see looking at its main pages how I could set up formatting for a style guide myself, unlike LaTeX. Thank you.
- thangalin 4y ago
  > That is not a trivial shell script or toolchain for me, and certainly is too much for someone looking for a Word replacement. Absolutely. I developed KeenWrite[0], a free and open source desktop editor, to replace those shell scripts with a graphical user interface and command-line interface[1]. There are several starter themes you can use, as well.[2] [0]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite [1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/cmd.md https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/cmd... [2]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/ https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/
dredmorbius 4y ago
Those are outstanding examples, and should put to paid any assertions that Markdown cannot be used for serious work. I'm seeing you'd submitted an eight-part series, "Typesetting Markdown", first part here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20003913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20003913 That got no traction on HN, but I'd love to see that included as a 2nd-chance pool or submitted feature.