Good ideas, Bryan. On Jan 12, 8:11 am, Bryan Larsen <[email protected]> wrote: > The Hobo project already uses two excellent mechanisms for document > creation. > > 1) agility uses a combination of git and markdown > 2) many of the manual pages use rubydoctest, which uses markdown > > The key advantage of both of these approaches is that the code snippets > contained within are executable code, and can be easily verified or > pulled out. > > This does mean that it takes longer to create the document, but you get > most of it back while verifying and bug-fixing the document, and it pays > for itself in spades when updating the document for a new version of > Hobo or new features, et cetera. > > Markdown is not a great idea for long form documents meant to be > printed. LaTeX is the best choice for that, hands down. > > The other consideration is that we would like to place chapters on > hobocookbook, which currently uses markdown. > > The other advantage of markdown is that all of Hobo's current > documentation and tutorials are written in markdown, so cutting and > pasting is easier. > > Another consideration is that far more people know markdown than know LaTex. > > Another advantage is that you don't need to learn another editor -- you > need an editor with a good markdown mode. Luckily, the editor you > currently use for programming will probably work. Both emacs and > TextMate have good markdown modes, as will any popular ruby programmer's > editor. > > Luckily, it is not difficult to transcode between markdown and LaTeX. > It's easy to transcode from markdown to LaTeX, and is easy to transcode > from LaTeX to markdown if you agree on an appropriate subset of LaTeX. > > It's my strong opinion that any future book projects be written in > Markdown and stitched together with LaTeX. > > Bryan > > blueHandTalking wrote: > > Well, I would vote on the checking it out part. > > > LaTex is excellent, but oy-ya-veh! > > Talk about an investment in time! > > > If Lyx does not have a steep learning curve, > > I believe it would be great to use LaTex in this fashion. > > > Jet > > >> Hi Owen, > > >> I was the one who suggested using Lyx for this project. > > >> Lyx is a frontend processor to LaTex, et al, which let's you write > >> your document while it takes care of the formatting. It's has a long > >> pedigree, works on Linux, Mac, Win > >> platforms, and is highly stable, with an active developers base. > > >> See website and wikepedia page: > > >>www.lyx.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX > > >> Also check out some of these article links I got off its website: > > >>http://www.tuxradar.com/content/lyx-made-easyhttp://scienceblogs.com/...... > > >> I think this is the all around best choice for this type of rapid (pun > >> intended) project. > >> Lyx comes with its own version control system, or can use an external > >> one, imports and export to Latex, PDF, etc, and produces output that > >> you can absolutely control and see what it looks like before going to > >> print. > > >> Oh, and it's all open source software and FREE! > > >> Besides the initial learning curve, there are very few reasons for not > >> using Lyx as a long term platform for producing any of the documents > >> the Hobo project will/should produce over its lifetime. > > >> My 2 cents. > > >> Jabari > >
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hobo Users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hobousers?hl=en.
