A mini D book: Markdown or LaTeX?

[Chris Wright via Digitalmars-d]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2017 11:58:45 +0000, Chris wrote:

> On Tuesday, 24 January 2017 at 14:27:15 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> Which one works well? I'm more concerned about syntax highlighting and
>> line numbering (in some cases). Support for custom fonts.
> 
> I know people who write articles and their Ph.D.
> thesis in LaTeX to get maximum control over the layout (to avoid
> Word-like surprises).

If you are submitting a paper to an academic journal, they will tell you 
what format they expect. If you sent a paper as a Word document when they 
require LaTeX, they will reject it with a note telling you to use LaTeX 
instead. Conversely, if they expect Word documents, they will reject 
anything in LaTeX.

As a PhD student, your advisor will tell you what format to use. This will 
almost certainly match the most commonly used file format for journal 
submissions in your field.

Regardless, you want *consistency* more than control. If you submit to a 
CS journal, they will often give you a .sty file -- this sets up page 
layout and the like, taking control away from the writer of the article. 
If you submit to a humanities journal, they might have a Word document 
template. They might also simply give style requirements that you must 
obey.

> The downside is the source code.
> It's not very nice to read and you get lost easily. And try to get back
> after a year and change something!

It's like C++. If you use the same restricted subset that you understand 
concretely, you shouldn't have a bad time. If you use a different set of 
packages and macros every document, you're in for a world of hurt.

> Also, you have to convert it to PDF
> each time you wanna (proof)read it, so you usually deal with two layouts
> at the same time (source code and PDF/HTML), which is time consuming and
> error prone.

It separates the writing / editing process from the proofing process and 
gives you a significantly different format for proofing. This is helpful 
for catching errors.

I wouldn't use htlatex. Instead of a simple <em> or <i> tag, it produces 
<span class="autogenerated-i-1"> type things. Which is okay if you just 
want to throw it up online, but if you want to produce an ebook with 
maximum compatibility, simpler HTML is better.

> A lot of publishers will prefer Word, because they can easily edit it
> and if they have their own layout section, they will transform Word to
> txt and paste it into say Adobe InDesign.

Change tracking and commenting are the huge things publishers use Word for.

> I for my part have stopped worrying about it too much. Just write the
> text (in Word or an Ascii editor)

If it's a few pages, it's painful and error-prone to retro-add formatting 
once you finished the content. If it's a hundred pages, you might need to 
spend several weeks to format it. That doesn't seem like a good tradeoff 
to me.