Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX

Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by xiaq on Saturday February 17, 2018 @08:02PM (#16403797)

Pandoc's tex_math_dollars, tex_math_single_backslash and raw TeX mode makes it possible to fallback to TeX whenever you need: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#math-input

A Markdown -> LaTeX -> pdf pipeline was how I wrote all of my algorithm assignments in college. I wrote things like:

    * **Basis**. Prove for $n = 0$...

    * **Induction**. If \mathcal{G} is a graph ...

      \begin{equation}
        ...
      \end{equation}

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Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by tincholio on Sunday February 18, 2018 @03:46AM (#16405086)

You seem to be well over half-way to LaTeX there, so what's the point in using markdown?

If the verbosity of writing \begin{description} ... \item[basis]... \end{description} is the issue, you can get around that with a couple of shorthand macros.

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Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by black_knight on Sunday February 18, 2018 @04:13AM (#16405148)

I wrote my math phd thesis in Markdown/LaTeX in this way.

I also replaced all maths symbols with their Unicode equivalent. The result was very readable markdown source text, easily compiled to Latex and PDF, using a mk file.

My thesis also included formalised proofs in a proof assistant, and they were just written straight into the markdown files as code blocks, and were using the same Unicode symbols as the rest.

Later, when publishing the different parts of my thesis, this separation from Latex made it easier to convert to whatever cls the publisher wanted, since I would just change the template.

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Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by tincholio on Sunday February 18, 2018 @05:04AM (#16405283)

I wrote mine in plain LaTeX, never had an issue with it. Regarding code, you can use the listings package (\lstincludelisting) to include source code files directly. I fail to see the interest in having a bastardized, not quite TeX, not quite MD file (unless you're using something like Org, of course, and using its other functionalities).

Regarding having unicode for the maths, how did you deal with symbols that needed scaling (brackets, integrals, etc.?) They may look simpler when seen as text, but they certainly won't render nicely as math...

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Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by black_knight on Sunday February 18, 2018 @06:58AM (#16405628)

I just make the symbols shortcuts for the commands. So for instance

∑_{0≤n≤k}n²

expands to

\sum_{0\le n\le k} n^2.

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Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by tincholio on Sunday February 18, 2018 @07:19AM (#16405693)

Do you have a library of these substitutions available? Sounds like it could be useful.

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Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by black_knight on Sunday February 18, 2018 @09:25AM (#16406194)

I just have this[0], which is a list of the substitutions. You can either make it a sty file, or just stuff it in the preamble, or template.

Some of these are suboptimal. But you can just change them, and make your own.

[0]: http://lpaste.net/362623

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Re:Reach for Markdown, not LaTeX by tincholio on Sunday February 18, 2018 @10:57AM (#16406609)

Thanks!

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