Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[Edward K. Ream]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 12:24 PM Steve Litt 
wrote:

I've worked partially through the tutorials several times, but got bogged
> down and went on to other things.


For you, I would suggest working through Leo's rst3 tutorial
. You don't need to know about
clones, or scripting, or much else except the basic terminology that an "x
node" is a node whose headline starts with "@x".

Feel free to ask questions here.

So it wasn't Lindsey complaining about missing tools, it was me. And
> I'm referring to exactly one thing: The ability to create a style on my
> own, with a name created by me, and have that style stay a style all
> the way through the compile chain until being translated to an
> appearance in the very last process. A good example is CSS:
>
> p.story{font-style: italic; margin-right: 1em; margin-left: 1em;}
>
> and later
>
>  the following:
>
> It was a dark and stormy night ...
> 
>

Thanks for the clarifications. I never gave this aspect of html any
thought. reStructuredText has the "raw" directive, so should be possible to
do this with rST.

Edward

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Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[tbp1...@gmail.com]

With Sphinx/Rst you can change the css stylesheet and get it to use yours 
instead.  For example, the difference between the appearance of the docs on 
the Sphinx site and those on ReadTheDocs is the CSS stylesheet.  I'm not 
sure how you can get Sphinx to use a newly named style - one that it 
doesn't inherently know about - for a given paragraph or section, but I 
wouldn't be surprised if there's a way.

On Monday, April 12, 2021 at 1:24:22 PM UTC-4 stevelitt wrote:

>
> The ability to name and define a style that stays a style throughout 
> the editable files of the entire compile chain is all I want out of 
> life, assuming no premature conversion of the style p.story to 
> appearances, and assuming that in each format (html, ePub and PDF) I 
> can create a different style to appearance mapping for p.story, that 
> gets applied at the very last minute. Without Pandoc. 
>
> Markdown has no such ability. Neither does AsciiDoc. AsciiDoctor 
> *might*, but it appears to be very complicated. LyX' HTML exporter does 
> very premature conversions of styles to appearance, so that the 
> resulting HTML loses most of its styles, meaning you can't convert from 
> HTML to something further. What I've briefly read about Sphinx + rST is 
> that it might be able to --- perhaps with the use of rolls, but I've 
> found no example on the Internet, so I have to experiment. 
>

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Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[Steve Litt]

Edward K. Ream said on Fri, 9 Apr 2021 12:41:30 -0500

>On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 7:55 AM Steve Litt 
>wrote:
>
>Hi Steve. Thanks for the summary.  I'm not sure I have the attributions
>correct below, but here are my comments.
>
>> 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.
>
>Imo, Sphinx + rST are relatively easy to learn. Those tools should
>suffice to write almost any book.

Thanks for the tip! I'll put some more time into Sphinx + rST.

>
>> 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.
>
>Hmm. It would be nice if commentators tried out the tools they are
>describing.

:-) I've tried Leo many times, but still don't know even 3% of it. 

>
>Leo's rst3 command is the "converter" program. rst3 complements
>rST/sphinx as follows:
>
>- Can generate multiple documents from a single outline: one per @rst
>node en.
>- Automagically creates rST section markup using outline structure.
>  This means you can reorganize your paper or book freely, a huge
> advantage.
>- Optionally generates intermediate files for sphinx.
>
>> As we have been describing on leo-editor, rst3 supports a very few  
>frills, including ignoring parts of the @rst tree entirely, or not
>generating section markup for one or more nodes, thereby allowing
>authors to organize long sections using suboutline.
>
>> 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.

>Did the commentator mean that Leo itself is a huge system? True
>enough, but working through Leo's tutorials
> is all someone needs to do to
>start writing their opus.

I was the commentator. I've worked partially through the tutorials
several times, but got bogged down and went on to other things. I'm
speaking as a Leo outsider or newbie here: Leo has so many capabilities
that learning the majority of it is a serious commitment. All the
capabilities are real, needed things, I have no doubt of that. All I'm
saying is learning something that capable is a commitment, and in my
experience a linear walk through several tutorials wasn't enough to get
me capable beyond regular outline workflow.

I'll try again when I get some time.


>> 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.
>
>To summarize my responses to such discussions:
>
>1. You're screwed if you insist on wysiwyg. How do you create a table
>of contents?

That's my opinion also, but Lindsey's workflow, priorities and past
experience lead him to WYSIWYG.

>
>2. Some people spend their whole life complaining about missing tools,
>without any clear idea of what they want. Others use the tools that do
>exist.  Some people even help improve the tools they use :-)

Yes, I didn't give full context. Earlier in the thread, I had remarked
that because of LibreOffice's handling of styles, it was unsuitable for
long documents, and gave (as I remember) Bluefish, Leo, MS-Word,
Inkscape, LyX, Stylz (which is not complete), org-mode, and several
other alternatives. Lindsey basically said LibreOffice was good enough
for him, and for times sake he likes WYSIWYG. In one situation I agree
with him: If I had a quick 1 pager to write, I'd use either LibreOffice
or Inkscape and be done with it, not a more robust tool meant to
produce bigger and higher quality output.

So it wasn't Lindsey complaining about missing tools, it was me. And
I'm referring to exactly one thing: The ability to create a style on my
own, with a name created by me, and have that style stay a style all
the way through the compile chain until being translated to an
appearance in the very last process. A good example is CSS:

p.story{font-style: italic; margin-right: 1em; margin-left: 1em;}

and later



The cool thing about CSS in HTML is that, if the HTML is actually meant
to produce an ePub, the p.story style stays a style all the way
through, and is translated to appearance by the ePub reader.

In LaTeX, my Story "environment" (TeXish for paragraph style) is as
follows:

\newenvironment{storyL}{
\par
\begingroup
\leftskip 0.4in\rightskip 0.4in
\it
\noindent{.\dotfill{}.\par}
%~\vskip -0.3in
}{
%~\vskip -0.05in
\par\noindent{.\dotfill{}.\par}
\endgroup
%~\vskip 0.0in
~\\
}

Once again, I named the style, I defined it, and that 

Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[tbp1...@gmail.com]

The VR3 plugin for Leo can render Asciidoc to HTML using an Ascidoc command 
line processor, and then display it inside Leo in its display pane.  I have 
found that the conversion is slow for larger asciidoc trees, though (not 
because of Leo but because of the processor).  The flavor of HTML would 
depend on the external processor.

You write your document as a subtree in Leo.  You can render any node or 
subtree, or the entire subtree.  Node headlines become section titles in 
the rendered result.

On Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 3:11:10 PM UTC-4 David Szent-Györgyi wrote:

> On Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 4:14:30 AM UTC-4 Edward K. Ream wrote:
>
>>
>> 1. Those who are planning major writing projects would be well advised to 
>> make a serious study of the strengths and weakness of the major contenders, 
>> including Jupyter, LaTeX, reStructuredText, and Leo. And yes, it will take 
>> some study. wysiwyg editors and simplistic markup languages like markdown 
>> are too limiting. Better to invest in more powerful tools.
>>
>> 2. It is a great mistake to underestimate the capabilities of existing 
>> tools.
>>
>> I have made this mistake several times. 30 years ago, I despaired of 
>> using Emacs because I didn't understand that tab completion makes it 
>> unnecessary to remember full command names, or to type them. Had I 
>> understood this, I would likely have based Leo on Emacs. Leo's entire 
>> history would have changed, and I would not have spent much of the last 30 
>> years dealing with tangential editor-related issues.
>>
>> In short,* please* take the time to study what is already possible. 
>> Major tools typically have dozens or even hundreds of contributors. It 
>> would be impossible to do better on one's own.
>>
>
> Edward is absolutely right in recommending using existing tools when 
> possible. 
>
> I am looking for a markup language for plain-text files, some of which are 
> documentation meant for PDF or ODF, some of which are plain text meant for 
> conversion via templates to static HTML5 for a Web site. Has anyone else 
> worked with AsciiDoc format? 
>
> AsciiDoc is meant to be less ad-hoc than Markdown and the variants 
> thereof. It is meant to be semantically equivalent to DocBook XML, and its 
> creators are early in an effort to write a specification  complete with an 
> open Technology Compatibility Kit 
> .
>  
>
>
> The creators of AsciiDoc offer Asciidoctor , a "
> *fast*, open source 
>  text 
> processor and publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc 
>  content to HTML5, 
> DocBook, PDF, and other formats"; AsciiDoctor is cross-platform, written in 
> Ruby; AsciidoctorJ  runs on 
> a Java Virtual Machine, and Asciidoctor.js 
>  in JavaScript 
> environments, including Web browsers. The leaders of the Asciidoctor 
> project write that AsciidoctorJ and Asciidoctor.js need to develop 
> independently of Asciidoctor, which is one motivation for the creation of a 
> specification and TCK. 
>
> The Python implementation, AsciiDoc-py 
> , is limited to legacy syntax 
> for AsciiDoc. 
>
>  
>

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Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[David Szent-Györgyi]

On Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 4:14:30 AM UTC-4 Edward K. Ream wrote:

>
> 1. Those who are planning major writing projects would be well advised to 
> make a serious study of the strengths and weakness of the major contenders, 
> including Jupyter, LaTeX, reStructuredText, and Leo. And yes, it will take 
> some study. wysiwyg editors and simplistic markup languages like markdown 
> are too limiting. Better to invest in more powerful tools.
>
> 2. It is a great mistake to underestimate the capabilities of existing 
> tools.
>
> I have made this mistake several times. 30 years ago, I despaired of using 
> Emacs because I didn't understand that tab completion makes it unnecessary 
> to remember full command names, or to type them. Had I understood this, I 
> would likely have based Leo on Emacs. Leo's entire history would have 
> changed, and I would not have spent much of the last 30 years dealing with 
> tangential editor-related issues.
>
> In short,* please* take the time to study what is already possible. Major 
> tools typically have dozens or even hundreds of contributors. It would be 
> impossible to do better on one's own.
>

Edward is absolutely right in recommending using existing tools when 
possible. 

I am looking for a markup language for plain-text files, some of which are 
documentation meant for PDF or ODF, some of which are plain text meant for 
conversion via templates to static HTML5 for a Web site. Has anyone else 
worked with AsciiDoc format? 

AsciiDoc is meant to be less ad-hoc than Markdown and the variants thereof. 
It is meant to be semantically equivalent to DocBook XML, and its creators 
are early in an effort to write a specification  complete with an open 
Technology Compatibility Kit 
.
 


The creators of AsciiDoc offer Asciidoctor , a "
*fast*, open source 
 text 
processor and publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc 
 content to HTML5, DocBook, 
PDF, and other formats"; AsciiDoctor is cross-platform, written in Ruby; 
AsciidoctorJ  runs on a Java 
Virtual Machine, and Asciidoctor.js 
 in JavaScript environments, 
including Web browsers. The leaders of the Asciidoctor project write that 
AsciidoctorJ and Asciidoctor.js need to develop independently of 
Asciidoctor, which is one motivation for the creation of a specification 
and TCK. 

The Python implementation, AsciiDoc-py 
, is limited to legacy syntax 
for AsciiDoc. 

 

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Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[Edward K. Ream]

On Friday, April 9, 2021 at 12:41:41 PM UTC-5 Edward K. Ream wrote:

>> 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.

> 1. You're screwed if you insist on wysiwyg. 
...
> 2. Some people spend their whole life complaining about missing tools, 
without any clear idea of what they want. 

I apologize for the insulting tone. A more helpful response would be 
something like this:

1. Those who are planning major writing projects would be well advised to 
make a serious study of the strengths and weakness of the major contenders, 
including Jupyter, LaTeX, reStructuredText, and Leo. And yes, it will take 
some study. wysiwyg editors and simplistic markup languages like markdown 
are too limiting. Better to invest in more powerful tools.

2. It is a great mistake to underestimate the capabilities of existing 
tools.

I have made this mistake several times. 30 years ago, I despaired of using 
Emacs because I didn't understand that tab completion makes it unnecessary 
to remember full command names, or to type them. Had I understood this, I 
would likely have based Leo on Emacs. Leo's entire history would have 
changed, and I would not have spent much of the last 30 years dealing with 
tangential editor-related issues.

In short,* please* take the time to study what is already possible. Major 
tools typically have dozens or even hundreds of contributors. It would be 
impossible to do better on one's own.

HTH.

Edward

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Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[Edward K. Ream]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 7:55 AM Steve Litt  wrote:

Hi Steve. Thanks for the summary.  I'm not sure I have the attributions
correct below, but here are my comments.

> 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.

Imo, Sphinx + rST are relatively easy to learn. Those tools should suffice
to write almost any book.

> 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.

Hmm. It would be nice if commentators tried out the tools they are
describing.

Leo's rst3 command is the "converter" program. rst3 complements rST/sphinx
as follows:

- Can generate multiple documents from a single outline: one per @rst node
en.
- Automagically creates rST section markup using outline structure.
  This means you can reorganize your paper or book freely, a huge advantage.
- Optionally generates intermediate files for sphinx.

> As we have been describing on leo-editor, rst3 supports a very few
frills, including ignoring parts of the @rst tree entirely, or not
generating section markup for one or more nodes, thereby allowing authors
to organize long sections using suboutline.

> 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.

Did the commentator mean that Leo itself is a huge system? True enough, but
working through Leo's tutorials  is all
someone needs to do to start writing their opus.

> 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.

To summarize my responses to such discussions:

1. You're screwed if you insist on wysiwyg. How do you create a table of
contents?

2. Some people spend their whole life complaining about missing tools,
without any clear idea of what they want. Others use the tools that do
exist.  Some people even help improve the tools they use :-)

Edward

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Re: [ctlug] M$ Joy

[Steve Litt]

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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