apps-script-samples VS pandoc

One of the things that stifles openness is noise. Sifting through our public repos, some are very obviously redundant and just distracting. So we started by archiving a whole bunch of them - over half, in fact. We wrote some Google Apps Script in a spreadsheet to import and analyze the state of all our public repos:

I am not a JS developer, but in some tech areas there are niches with relatively fewer developers competing for the same position.

I don't know if this is actually a niche, but since I don't see it mentioned frequently on HN, perhaps you could have a look at Google Apps Script [0], which is basically JS for automating and extending Google Docs (Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides), and integrating them into GCP. Tons of companies have whole departments living inside Google Docs, so I imagine they would pay for software making their lives easier. I would but I currently don't have the budget for it, so I am writing short scripts myself. Curiously, Bard and ChatGPT produce really bad Apps Scripts code, which would be to your advantage.

When I occasionally hire people, I do look at their repos to see how good they are in a specific language. Specifically, how easy to follow and idiomatic their code is, what the quality of their comments and documentation is, are there any tests, even if very rudimentary. I particularly enjoy original projects like home automation, custom keyboard firmware, an alternative Netflix UI, a ggplot extension, a basic Python wrapper for some overly-complicated API vs. your typical to-do app or yet another analysis of the Bike Sharing dataset. I don't expect all people to have public repos or FLOSS contributions because not everyone has the time for that. However, if you wanted to demonstrate skills in a technology you haven't used professionally, I think it is a good idea.

0. https://developers.google.com/apps-script

I have a function in Apps Script that returns the Document Position, and I currently have it set to be called every second. However, I'm concerned about potential limitations or quotas that I might reach by making such frequent function calls. I got the idea from their own samples.

Here is the documentation link to help you: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/

Before we get started with ChatGPT, you'll need to set up Google Apps Script. If you're not already familiar with Google Apps Script, you can get started with the documentation here.

Since a few years I had a Google Apps Script that prefixed some events in my calendar with an emoji. This helps me spot certain events or categories of events. This blogpost explains very well why I like to add emoji's to my calendar events.

From my current employer I discovered that you can get surprisingly high mileage with spreadsheets and a little bit of scripting.

My employer uses Google Sheets with app scripts [1].

It automatically reads emails, updates a bunch of spreadsheets, makes other API calls, creates entire report documents etc.

The initial setup might take a while though.

[1] https://developers.google.com/apps-script

I have completed https://grasshopper.app entirely with no prior knowledge of coding. It is very hands on easy to follow. There is more doing coding than reading and each question has a walkthrough available. It is by Google and directs you too Google's own coding platform when you finish. It covers the basics of coding, automation, HTML/CSS/JavaScript and Google's AppScript that work with apps like Google Drive and Sheets. Each course has a PDF certificate of completion. (Last I checked the app was bricked and suggested using the webpage until they figured out the bug with the new operating system.)

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