On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 11:05:39 +1100 Alan Tyree <alanty...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Steve, > Could you elaborate a bit on your pandoc/markdown comments? What kind > of formatting is it that you find difficult/deficient. My impression > is that it creates pretty clean HTML so that the formatting is via > CSS. Hi Alan, Show me. I'd love to have my mind changed. Show me code to produce **semantic,styled** HTML from LaTeX or LyX via pandoc. As far as Markdown, if you're writing a simple fiction book with no appearance needs beyond bold, underline and italic, then yeah, Markdown and Asciidoc are both sufficient. My needs surpass that. [snip] > > Of course, I wouldn't start from LyX/LaTeX to produce these things > since the pandoc LaTeX -> HTML usually requires a lot of massaging. Precisely my point. There should be no massaging. Run one command on the LyX file, output a semantically correct ePub or xhtml or html5 that's well formed xml. > > Cheers, > Alan > > On Tue, 6 Nov 2018 at 08:46, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> > wrote: > > > On Mon, 5 Nov 2018 00:36:13 +0200 > > Dr Eberhard Lisse <nos...@lisse.na> wrote: > > > > > Steve, > > > > > > I fundamentally disagree about the relevance. > > > > > > LyX is a front end for LaTeX, not a document format. And it is a > > > FANTASTIC front end, which can be twsited to do a lot of > > > things :-)-O > > > > Sure, but LaTeX isn't the only game in town the way it was 10 years > > ago (unless you took Docbook seriously a decade ago). Most new > > books are ePubs or derivative mobis or whatever. > > > > > > > > > > pandoc can produce an epub from (reasonable) LaTeX (exported from > > > LyX), which kindlegen can translate into mobi. > > > > Yeah. I've had hundreds of people recommend pandoc and XSLT and the > > like. Have *you* ever successfully used pandoc to create HTML or > > ePub or mobi formatted to your desires? If you have, you're one in > > five hundred. Everyone recommends Pandoc, but finding people who > > have used it is like finding a needle in a haystack, and when you > > find such people and ask them how to do the conversion, they point > > you to Internet sites with procedures that make installing Gentoo > > or Arch a one click process. > > > > By the way, same thing goes for Asciidoc, Asciidoctor, Markdown, and > > Multimarkdown. Evvverybody recommends it, but few have used it to > > make books in which the author declares and uses styles. > > > > > For LaTeX there is lwarp at > > > > > > https://ctan.org/pkg/lwarp > > > > > > which also looks interesting. > > > > I wish I had a dime for every hour I spent, on solutions to this > > problems, that "look interesting". 99% of them turn out to be > > converters whose first step is to convert your styles into > > appearance, guaranteeing garbaged up output. > > > > > > > > > > XML would be a great step, and not only for epub. But that would > > > be a fundamental change, and who's going to do it? > > > > And that's where the rubber meets the road. Look back to the thread, > > starting on 7/22/2008, subject "Progress on the MS Word to LyX > > conversion". In that thread, against my warnings, by the way, > > several top Lyx developers promised an XML native format for LyX > > 1.7x. Not pidgeon XML. Not almost XML. Not halfassed XML. They > > promised XML. With a DTD, no less. > > > > Now my position was that XML is much harder to parse with Unix core > > utilities, so I was against it. But at least I figured that if it > > went XML, I could find an XML parser to do what I had been doing. > > With much more difficulty. But doable. > > > > But they went only half way, harming the inherent coreutils > > parsability without enabling the file to be processed by an XML > > parser. > > > > If memory serves me, 1.6 already had some XML-ish changes to the > > native format, I don't remember a 1.7, and 2.0 introduced the > > pidgeon XML we know today. Over 7 years have elapsed since 2.0's > > introduction, over a decade has elapsed since it was decided to > > have a well formed XML native format validated with a DTD. > > > > Retina display and iOS and all this Apple compatibility is nice, but > > I'll repeat, it's not 2008 and PDF is no longer the only game in > > town, and I think priority should be placed on finishing what was > > started in July of 2008. > > > > SteveT > > > > -- SteveT Steve Litt September 2018 featured book: Quit Joblessness: Start Your Own Business http://www.troubleshooters.com/startbiz
