David Wolfe said on Wed, 7 Apr 2021 11:11:48 -0500
>[ Lindsay Haisley writes: ]
>> I don’t have time to deal with word processor that’s not WYSIWYG.
>
>Understandable from a get-work-done perspective. As you've pointed
>out, that's where most people live. Consider a traditional word
>processor UI like that in LibreOffice that uses one or more simple
>markup formats as its document representation.
LibreOffice native format is a zipped group of six (IIRC) interrelated
XML files. It's not something like Asciidoc that's human readable and
easy to modify outside of a UI.
> I think Lyx is an old
>project that does this with TeX, but I don't have much experience with
>those. I remember not being impressed, but what if it could be made
>better?
LyX is a spectacular program **if** you're committed to it and if your
expected output is PDF and nothing else. It's a horrible way to write
things expected to be HTML or ePub. Also, LyX requires substantial LyX
expertise if you do any "off road driving". I've been writing books,
for sale to the public, in LyX, for the last 20 years, and it's worked
well for me.
>> IMHO, Libre office has improved over the years I’ve used it
>> substantially more than most other project programs.
>
>IMHO, LibreOffice has worked very hard matching MS Office
As I posted in another email, I'm not a fan of LibreOffice. But I have
some other ideas...
First of all, if you're writing a book with very few styling
requirements, AsciiDoc just might be something that would satisfy
Lindsey. It's not WYSIWYG, but it's sub-one-second compilable to PDF,
so at any point you can see what's happening on the
layout/font/appearance front. Sort of like the "see in graphical
mode" feature of WordPerfect 5.1. Not requiring a mouse, Asciidoc's
*much* faster authoring than any word processor or something like LyX.
And if you need more formatting and features, you can upgrade to its
big brother, Asciidoctor.
I'm thinking that if the majority of your document is simple, but some
things, like your title page and copyright page, are complex with
exacting formatting needs, you can do each of those pages in Inkscape
(SVG), and link those into the document at the proper places. SVG
incorporates seamlessly into HTML, and if it doesn't work directly into
PDF, it can be auto-converted to encapsulated PDF or whatever before
the entire document is converted. This is what LyX does with graphics.
I'm also looking into something called Restructured Text and a program
called Sphinx that seems to be a front end for Restructured Text. It's
complicated and I don't think would be appropriate for Lindsey.
Another great text-only format you can do in any editor is Plain TeX
(***NOT*** LaTeX, which requires a Ph.D to do right). It has the
most of the advantages of Asciidoc but is much more versatile, although
it authors a little slower because you have to actually spell out style
names. Plain TeX is meant to compile to PDF, but a suitable subset of
Plain TeX could be used to simultaneously author valid-XML HTML5, and
therefore ePub. My biggest problem with Plain TeX is that using
anything other than TeX fonts is difficult, but I'm still looking into
it.
For about 8 years I've been trying to create a text-editor created
format called Stylz, which would do all this stuff the right way.
Unfortunately, it's a difficult programming project, and other than a
couple test documents, I haven't gotten it working. However, last night
at an online GoLUG meeting, I met a guy who created a similar product
for his own books, and I'll be looking into that.
Emacs Org-Mode is another possibility if you drive on that side of the
road, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be something Lindsey would be
interested --- it's a lot of work.
There's also an outliner called Leo, which you can author entirely as
an outline with headlines that do or don't contain body text, and then
(I think) you can run a converter program, possibly one you'd need to
create yourself, to turn it into a ready made book, probably either PDF
or HTML/ePub. This isn't appropriate for Lindsey, because it's a huge
system with huge capabilities requiring a lot of knowledge: It's a
commitment. I'm copying the Leo list on this email.
I feel everybody's pain. As far as I know, there's not a single piece
of software out there that authors quickly and yet does consistent,
styles-based formatting and outputs to both PDF and HTML. But I'll keep
searching.
SteveT
Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
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