I started writing this book project using zettlr in markdown, because that seemed like the best way to incorporate many citations from a wild variety of journals/books/articles. But I am now having serious problems trying to integrate files.
Latex is hard but I know it quite well, I just don't have a latex editor that I like that's reliable (I'm not doing this on overleaf, it's just me, no sharing needed).
Recs? Advice? I'm running Ubuntu.
crowdsource advice-seeking on latex/markdown
@sundogplanets
I'm probably late to this, but I'll suggest LyX. It's built on top of LaTeX and looks acts mostly like a normal wordprocessor. It can do anything LaTeX can do without needing to write markup, though it can do that too.
And yes, I have personal experience, having written a complete book in it complete with 800+ references.
It won't stop you hating bibliography management though :)
@sundogplanets
I like TexStudio so far, it has some autocomplete if I want but also doesn't get in my way with too many features.
Otherwise I've historically done vim, but that doesn't get you the side by side preview or quick navigation to the headings and labels.
TeX studio also has optional wizards and tools to help remember how to do things like insert images, and let's you select text to then change its size or style.
@sundogplanets I like TeXmaker, but I've also used emacs with Acutex in past
@sundogplanets not sure if it was mentioned anywhere else but typst https://github.com/typst/ is very good.
There is decent integration in a number of apps, they have their own webUI, the tool at its core isbasically a single binary with a decent albeit not latex size packages.
I wrote my first four books using LaTeX in vim:
I wrote a macro that I bound to F2 that expanded the current word to a template, so itemize<F2> would expand to a begin/end block with a \item and the insert point after it.
Beyond that, the main advice I’d give is to keep a very strict separation of content and presentation. Write semantic markup and define the macros that you use in a separate file (for example, I had a \keyword macro that italicised the word and added it as an index entry, and a similar one that expanded abbreviations and added the abbreviation as a cross-reference in the index).
Did I say I was good at latex? HA HA HA I brought this on myself didn't I?
I want to get some writing done but I'm stuck in why-won't-latex-find-my-bibliography purgatory instead
(Not asking advice, it's too specific and I'm probably doing something dumb. Just yelling into the void about latex. Feels very grad-student-y)
@sundogplanets I use Texmaker and JabRef
I FIXED IT!! I SAID THE RIGHT INCANTATION!!
@sundogplanets I'm glad you fixed it before I spotted your post as I fear I may have struggled to avoid the unsolicited advice loop that's almost a requirement on social media. It would probably have involved a fountain pen, a very specific ink, almost certainly Clairefontaine paper and writing all the latex / markdown (or my personal demon, re-structured text) by hand.
Good thing we managed to avoid all that!
In other news. Migraine. And bored.
@sundogplanets And zettlr looks interesting. I'll have a look into that one, post-migraine.
@calum Hope your migraine lets up soon!
@sundogplanets LaTeX is great and it isn't, all at once.
The best rebuttal of LaTeX I heard was "I don't want to debug my document". Couldn't argue against that.
@sundogplanets congratulations!
always had a love/hate relationship with latex. once you finally figure out what obscure incantion you missed the first 12 times, it can do anything.
yelling into the void is the entirely of what I use social media for 😅
@sundogplanets all I'm hearing is "I'm looking for great latex extensions", so here you go: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/latex-coffee-stains/qsjjwwsrmwnc
(I offer this in the hopes that it's humorous enough to relieve a bit of latex pain)
@sundogplanets Latex is the best tool for procrastination when you should be writing
@sundogplanets
You might want to continue with zettlr, just convert with pandoc, using a template like this one by @maehr :
https://pandoc-templates.org/template/academic-pandoc-template/
Thought I'd mention LyX, a pretty popular and well-maintained cross-platform app.
I've used it -- it's nice.
And it includes "textclasses for scientific societies, such as AMS, APS, IEEE, or specific journals like Astronomy and Astrophysics"
@sundogplanets maybe see if @mattgemmell pandoc publishing might work for you.
@sundogplanets I can very much recommend Pandoc and it's plethora of plugins and filters. I use Pandoc, CSS, and Weasyprint to make PDF booklets with single file HTML renders from the same source and styling.
It's relatively simple, it's been around forever, and it won't lock you into just PDF like most LaTeX toolchains will. (Yes htlatex exists but no one who tells me about it has ever used it or wants to)
@sundogplanets I recently started using LaTeX Workshop, an extension that can be downloaded for VS Code or VS Codium (both available on Linux). It has worked nice for me so far. I also know that there is a LaTeX editor called Setzer that can be found on Flathub for Linux, although I haven't tried it much and, from what I've heard, the download size can be a bit heavy.
@sundogplanets can you say more about what you like? which features, what ease?
sudo apt install kile on the command line or with whatever tool you use to install software. I haven't written book-length things with it, but I have used it for articles and I don't see that it'd falter on longer works. I don't have any experience using Markdown in it, only Latex. I don't know if it can even handle Markdown.
@sundogplanets You might want to check out typst.app It's a relatively up and coming LaTeX alternative. I think will take markdown 1:1 and otherwise I found it to be just quite nice (from a programmers perspective)
They have an online editor but you can just download it and run it locally as is (or integrated into vs code/codium)
Two years ago it was still a little immature for my thesis (I used a lot of TikZ) It seems they can take bibtex files but also have their own format
@sundogplanets I can also recommend #quarto for a slightly more streamlined experience for converting markdown to various formats (html, pdf, epub) using pandoc
@sundogplanets yeah, I use Texstudio for this. Ugly but it works.
@sundogplanets since other probably recommend better things I recommend what I did for my Bachelors thesis. You can generate Markdown to PDF or to epub etc. with pandoc there are plugins for pandoc like citeproc (you can search the web easily for pandoc citeproc) that adds citations to your paper. There are other plugins that improve table of contents etc.
you can create script files that simplify the generation I even made a makefile back then.
re: crowdsource advice-seeking on latex/markdown
re: crowdsource advice-seeking on latex/markdown
@sundogplanets i also really do just wish there was something that was 1:1 like overleaf but offline because, honestly, overleaf rips
@nu I LOVE overleaf. I just don't want to do something on a cloud when I really just need it locally on my laptop!
