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Open Source Showerthoughts #0 (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Muehe@lemmy.ml to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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I ~~am sure~~ hope somebody™ already thought of this. Feel free to advertise your project here.

P.S.: Image transcription:

Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants gesturing to the left with open hands:

Somebody should take document type conversion from Pandoc and version control from Git

Patrick gesturing to the right in a pushing motion:

And build a frontend around it

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[-] Muehe@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Shameless plug for Pandoc because I love it

That scalable vector graphic on the page shows source document type on the left and target type on the right. TL;DL: It converts about two dozen document types into about three dozen document types.

P.S.E.G.: PDF ← Markdown ←→ HTML → PDF

P.P.S: Where are my manners? Image transcription added to post.

[-] sxan@midwest.social 7 points 1 year ago

The author is also involved in a markup language called djot, which is like markdown, but well-defined. It's an awesome language that will probably languish under markdown's dominance.

[-] Cargon@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've been using Quarto a lot for Data Science work and it uses Pandoc under the hood I recall.

Not sure what you're envisioning by Pandoc + git, but the RStudio IDE has a git integration and a WYSIWYM Quarto editor.

[-] Muehe@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Quarto looks quite interesting indeed, thanks for pointing it out!

For those interested it's an "Open-source scientific and technical publishing system built on Pandoc"

https://quarto.org/
https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli

[-] Muehe@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Like a data format inhabiting the centre of that conversion graph they have on their website, basically a superset of the available input types, that is then version controlled by git, and can be exported to any of the output formats, in a neat frontend that removes all that complexity from me. :D

[-] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Quarto user here, I use it for my blog.

There is also a vscode extension for WYSIWYM editing.

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 17 points 1 year ago

This! I want office that just uses markdown/latex and pandoc under the hood to output PDF documents

[-] Kata1yst@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago

That's just LaTeX?

[-] Muehe@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Haha, kind of. However conversion between all these formats is lossy in some directions and I don't know of any software that integrates version control of documents by default (not saying there are none).

P.S.: Yes I know, https://xkcd.com/927/

[-] redxef@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

So what's stopping you from putting your LaTeX files into a git repo and building them into a pdf when needed?

[-] Muehe@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Nothing, I'd just like a nice GUI around it.

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 4 points 1 year ago

What's a good Latex editor that abstracts the formatting behind buttons and doesn't need you to learn Latex?

[-] Kata1yst@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

The closest would probably be LyX, or Overleaf.

[-] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sort of like LyX?

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

I'll have to take a look at that

[-] prashanthvsdvn@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

So something like eMacs with org mode and has pandoc under it to export to various outputs?

[-] kitonthenet@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago

am I crazy or is this just a markdown renderer

[-] monk@lemmy.unboiled.info 1 points 1 year ago

yeah, but then your car is one unwieldy bicycle

[-] ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Well every one already recommended latex or markdown.

I would also recommend typst, it's a modern latex alternative easy to make templates and a markdown like syntax, none of all the backslash keywords that I somehow always forget.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Typst is fucking amazing. LaTeX is powerful but just takes too much effort to use for large part of the population to the point that I just can't recommend it to most people outside STEM. Typst is consistent, easier to use, faster, and collaborative. With no nonsensical error messages, broken builds, and technical debt - I can actually recommend it to most.

[-] skilltheamps@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Uhhh typst looks hot, that one I need to give a spin, thanks!

[-] ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I made a template a while back when I had to make report, since I had a professor that disliked the markdown look of previous ones.

A bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, you make a few templates and write on them just like markdown with custom alias and whatnot.

[-] EmasXP@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Speaking of LaTeX, I really recommend LyX. You don't need to know any LaTeX to use it, and the result is always satisfying

[-] prashanthvsdvn@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I am confused what would be the combined functionality of the merged product. Do you need to output of converted files to be added to git when a document is version controlled?

[-] Muehe@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Well like uzay said, basically just an office GUI that allows me to import/export into a lot of formats and automates document versioning away.

[-] prashanthvsdvn@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Do check on eMacs. I know it does a fantastic job for org mode but I’m not fully aware how close markdown support is.

[-] nutshell7827@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

You can have Pandoc and Git with Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/). Both as Plugins. Or even with VS Code. Obsidian sadly isn't open source.

[-] MasseR@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 year ago

So like gitit?

[-] dumb_luck@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

I’m currently working on this, using git and having GitHub actions produce artifacts when building the markdown files to pdf. It’s great!

[-] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 3 points 1 year ago

Pandoc is absolutely amazing indeed

[-] epyon22@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

First time hearing about pandoc are you saying like a more competent version of o365 or confluence?

[-] prashanthvsdvn@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No Pandoc isn’t an editor by any means. It’s an document conversion tool. Think converting a Markdown file into an docx or html or epub or pptx or pdf (via LaTeX or ConText). That’s what pandoc does.

[-] xigoi 9 points 1 year ago

It's also known as The Only Thing Written in Haskell That People Actually Use.

[-] Muehe@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

If I'm understanding your question right, kind of. Pandoc is only for document conversion though, no spreadsheets, presentations, etc. But at that it can convert between a lot of formats. And git can be used to version and share those documents.