KeenWrite VS pandoc

KeenWrite is my free, open-source, cross-platform desktop Markdown editor that can produce beautifully typeset PDFs. I started working on it years ago to help write a novel that has a complex timeline and I couldn't find a text editor that would allow me to integrate a character sheet with the story itself.

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

Tutorials:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...

Here's what I mean by using variables directly:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFCqe3A5dFg

CommonMark doesn't propose a standard for bibliographic references. Would anyone find the editor more appealing if it had cross-references and citations?

My cross-platform desktop text editor, KeenWrite, allows users to define variables in an external YAML file. The editor calls out to Kroki[1] to convert text-based diagrams to SVG. The diagrams can reference variables and are rendered using EchoSVG[2].

KeenWrite[3] can produce PDF documentation from Markdown documents that has PlantUML diagrams with elements stored in an external, machine-readable file. Here are screenshots showing variables on the left, diagram text in the middle, and a real-time render on the right:

* https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/main/...

* https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/main/...

KeenWrite supports all diagrams offered by Kroki, which includes "diagram-plantuml".

[1]: https://kroki.io/

[2]: https://github.com/css4j/echosvg/

[3]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

Although not interactive, I've created a video series that shows advanced usage of Markdown. Namely R, external variables, diagrams, math, annotations, and a different approach to metadata:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...

Tutorial 4 shows basic Markdown:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNbGSiRzx-0

The top-right of each video shows keyboard and mouse clicks to help follow along.[1] My desktop text editor, KeenWrite[2], is used in the tutorials.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/kmcaster

[2]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/main/scripts/bu...

My template script provides a way to make user-friendly shell scripts. In a script that uses the template, you define the dependencies and their sources:

    DEPENDENCIES=(

I didn't create the fork, nor am I affiliated with the project. I use it in my text editor, KeenWrite to rasterize SVG.

KeenWrite Themes[1] are instructions that tell ConTeXt how to typeset XHTML documents (content) into PDF files (presentation). I made a tutorial that shows how my FOSS desktop text editor, KeenWrite[3], allows users to write in Markdown to typeset a document against a particular theme.

Before it can be used for scientific papers, it needs cross-references, which, unfortunately, aren't part of the CommonMark specification.

I posit that the vast majority of LaTeX users don't grok how to separate content from presentation. When I asked a question on TeX.SE about how to adjust the line spacing between enumerated items (spanning a couple dozen enumerated lists), the vast majority of people voted for the answer of using `\itemsep0em` to tweak each list ... individually.[4] The correct answer, IMO, is to fix the problem globally, and not waste time tweaking individual lists.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QpX70O5S30

[3]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

[4]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6081/reduce-space-be...

My main authoring tool is then Emacs Markdown Mode (https://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/). For data entry, it comes with some bells and whistles similar to org-mode, like C-c C-l for inserting links etc.

I seldom export my notes for external usage, but if it is the case, I use lowdown (https://kristaps.bsd.lv/lowdown/) which also comes with some nice output targets (among the more unusual are Groff and Terminal). Of cource pandoc (https://pandoc.org/) does a very good job here, too.

This is one of those things that the ever-amazing pandoc (https://pandoc.org/) does very well, on top of supporting virtually every other document format.

Folks feel the same way about Markdown versus LaTeX: why use something significantly more complicated where a looser, human-readable grammar works better?

For any other situations, I use https://pandoc.org/, or, generate a Word doc scriptomatically.

pandoc toolchain pour builder une version confortable/imprimable en phase de travail (ePub, pdf, docx, html)

Congrats on the launch, I guess, but there are so many free options that I can't think of a situation where paying $0.25 per document would be justified...? Just to name a few:

Back in the days, I used to use XSL-FO [0] and it was okay. It was not very precise but it rarely if ever broke, and was perfectly integrated with an XML/XSLT solution. Yeah, this was a long time ago.

Last month I used html-to-pdfmake [1] and it's also not very precise and more fragile, but very efficient and fast.

Yet another approach would be to pro grammatically generate .rtf files (for example) and use Pandoc [2] to produce PDFs (I have not tried this in production but don't see why it wouldn't work).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSL_Formatting_Objects

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/html-to-pdfmake

[2] https://pandoc.org/

Others have mentioned static site generators. I like Hakyll [1] because it can tightly integrate with Pandoc [2] and allows you to develop custom solutions if your needs ever grow.

[1]: https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/

[2]: https://pandoc.org/

Have you compared it with a conversion by pandoc (https://pandoc.org/)?

I have used it to kickstart a blogging project that I wish to come back to soon. The Lua inter-op for custom readers, writers and filters is great but I wish there was more editor integration and even perhaps an official IDE/editor with built-in debugging features (probably something already do-able with Emacs but I haven't checked). The only blocker for my project is no support for "ChunkedDoc" for Lua filters [1] which forces me to write more code and a complicated Makefile.

[1]: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/9061