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  • This is very close to the philosophy behind something I've been building:

    https://github.com/simonschnake/Mark2Tex

    I built Mark2TeX while writing my thesis in Obsidian. I wanted to write the prose in Markdown, but keep a normal LuaLaTeX document for math, citations, cross-references, etc.

    So Mark2TeX lets me use Markdown-like files and drop into real LaTeX whenever I need it.

    I deliberately didn't try to build a complete Markdown/Pandoc replacement. It's basically an attempt to under-engineer the Markdown/LaTeX boundary.

    by schnake
  • As an aside, timelapse videos like this are a useful proof of thoughtfulness in the age of AI slop
    by robmoore
  • Not really a proof, since AI can generate such videos as well.
    by zvr
  • And here I've just been using pen/paper for outlining and notes and then GoogleDocs for mine.
    by paulorlando
  • Why not Markdown - pandoc - epub/pdf?
    by emil-lp
  • Presumably because the publisher takes the manuscript and does all the formatting and so on.
    by saaaaaam
  • Not OP but probably to be able to tweak the layout without having a doctorate in LaTeX templates.
    by hk__2
  • I did LaTeX -> pandoc -> print ready pdf & epub.

    I really liked it because I have infinite layout control with LaTeX, and it’s a full blown programming language with if statements, operator overloading, functions, etc etc. makes it really easy to have one source document that does different things when outputting to different formats.

    by testing22321
  • I finished a BSc and an MSc with quarto and fossil. It had to be in Word so I wrote a VBA script that pulled comments so I could edit my markdown files easier.
    by ifh-hn
  • Is there a word for the right amount of engineering? Kind of a negative concept of not engaging in performative conceptualization. Just doing it in a way that the implementation was natural and not worth writing home about.
    by hyperhello
  • Even-engineering?
    by drums8787
  • This is arguably what MVP is supposedly to mean
    by pimlottc
  • Good question, sometimes engineering that leads to a creation which is “purpose built”.
    by Barbing
  • Yeah. It's "engineering".

    Wikipedia's introductory paragraph to the subject includes the following sentence:

    > Engineering involves balancing competing demands such as safety, performance, aesthetics, cost, laws and regulations, and time, while operating within fundamental limits such as the laws of physics.

    (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering)

    I realize the word is overloaded now and that people are confusing writing programs and other cerebral pursuits with engineering, but that doesn't change its original definition.

    by striking
  • The related Over Engineering Post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335292

    Does seem like overkill but everyone scratches their own itch.

    by noir_lord
  • I have added tooling so that I can get code listings into / out of the textbook that I'm writing so that I can easily and make sure that they work and produce correct code.

    And I'm doing it in LaTeX so I have templates doing some work.

    But it's sure nice to just be able to type `make` and see a pdf pop out and green unit tests on the code 3-4 minutes later.

    (I have also standardized TODO things to make them easily searchable and show up in a distinctive style in the manuscript).

    by mlyle
  • > overkill

    To write my hard sci-fi novel, I wrote a cross-platform Markdown editor so that I could use interpolated variables along with R code:

    https://keenwrite.com/screenshots.html

    ConTeXt produces the PDF files. I also developed a few calculators to help confirm physics and other plot-related aspects:

    https://autonoma.ca/calculators/

    by thangalin