texpresso VS keenwrite-themes

> I would love to hear of other low(er) barrier-to-entry ways to use LaTeX, because it’s a pretty steep commitment for someone who isn’t a professional writer.

I have been working on and off on a fork of LaTeX with real-time feedback: you can see the document and error messages rendered and updated live. It also supports SyncTeX (going from a source line to the corresponding output and vice-versa).

I added vim support recently, you can see it in action there: https://github.com/let-def/texpresso.vim

KeenWrite[1], my Markdown text editor, was written with variables in mind. I've made a "theme" for the documentation for my house, called Domus.[2] You could get something producing PDFs in an evening.

Profile has my email.

[1]: https://keenwrite.com

[2]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/-/tree/main/d...

> I would love to hear of other low(er) barrier-to-entry ways to use LaTeX.

My FOSS desktop editor, KeenWrite[1], converts Markdown to XHTML, XHTML into TeX, then TeX into PDF. Users may drop into TeX itself for math, if needed. Behind the scenes, KeenWrite passes the document to ConTeXt along with a theme.[2] The theme abstracts away most of the complexities of TeX.

There isn't a resume theme, yet, though there are some available for ConTeXt that would be tempting to abstract.[3]

[1]: https://keenwrite.com/

[2]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/

[3]: https://github.com/BruXy/resume

My Typesetting Markdown series[1] describes crafting shell scripts to cobble together pandoc, knitr, math, ConTeXt, and YAML-based interpolated variables to produce PDF files.

For my sci-fi novel, my character sheet was inside of a spreadsheet. It dawned on me that the character sheet could be replaced with a YAML file and integrated with a Markdown editor. I developed KeenWrite[2] to replace the scripts while allowing me to use interpolated variables and R inside of the prose.

My novel has two separate timelines and I wanted to make sure that dates lined up correctly without having to do the date math manually. I implemented a number date functions in R[3] based around an "anchor" date. As long as all my other dates are relative (in days) to the anchor date, all the math checks out. Possessives and pronouns are also handled in R (meaning I can change a character's gender by changing a single variable, provided I haven't referenced any sex-specific body parts or characteristics).

Also, I wanted a nice-looking PDF file to send to alpha readers (more wanted, see profile). For that, I crafted KeenWrite Themes[4] along with a video tutorial series showing how all the software components work together.

[1]: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/05/22/typesetting-markdow...

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

[3]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/-/blob/main/R/conver...

[4]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/

[5]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9...

I developed KeenWrite[0] with similar ideas to mdbook: typeset into PDF from Markdown. Technically, this happens in three stages. First, the Markdown is converted to XHTML. Second, the XHTML is converted to TeX commands. Third, the ConTeXt typesetting system produces a PDF file. Both the GUI and CLI can export to PDF.[1]

Like mdbook, the themes are isolated. Instead of CSS, KeenWrite themes are written in ConTeXt. There are several example starter themes.[2] A "thesis" theme would be a nice addition, but there's a problem.

Markdown lacks a standard for cross-references and citations. An open KeenWrite issue animates a possible UX solution.[3] The topic of references/citations has been discussed on CommonMark[4] without much movement. Parsing cross-references and citations would benefit flexmark-java[5] integrations. KeenWrite uses flexmark-java, but I'm otherwise unaffiliated. If anyone is interested in helping, reach out (see profile).

[0]: https://keenwrite.com/

[1]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/-/blob/main/docs/cmd...

[2]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite-themes/

[3]: https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/-/issues/145

[4]: https://talk.commonmark.org/t/cross-references-and-citations...

[5]: https://github.com/vsch/flexmark-java