On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 08:03:47AM -0300, Eduardo Ochs wrote: > Hi Vitek, > > I am the author of this package, > > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6/tug-slides.pdf > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6/tugboat-rev2.pdf > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6.html
Dear Eduardo, thank you for your response. What a beautiful package: ASCII art diagrams translated to production-quality outputs?! Sold! Perhaps we should write an article about using markdown and friends to produce academic texts using easy-to-read-and-write domain-specific languages. > that uses Lua to read material from the _comments_ of the current .tex > file. I think that what you need can be implemented easily on top of > this single-file version of the core of dednat6, > > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6/dednat6/minimalcore.lua.html > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6/dednat6/minimalcore.lua > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6/demo-core.tex.html > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6/demo-core.tex > http://angg.twu.net/dednat6/demo-core.pdf > > that only implements the code that interprets each block of lines > starting with "%L" as a chunk of Lua code... > > If this looks interesting to you, please get in touch! I took a > quick look at your markdown.dtx and I got the impression that 1) it > would be trivial to make my minimalcore.lua read the markdown code in > fencedCode blocks and make TeX skip over it, and that 2) it would be > easy to port the ideas from the prototype made with minimalcore.lua to > your markdown package. Using an external program to preprocess a TeX document is an interesting approach, but one that doesn't seem compatible with the way the Markdown package has operated for the past five years: we buffer input inside an environment, and we pass it to the Lua parser. We definitely don't want to use comments to separate Markdown text from the rest of the document: That can be justified for short ASCII art diagrams, but sounds pretty user-hostile for, say, a book worth of markdown text. > Cheers, > Eduardo Ochs > http://angg.twu.net/contact.html Best, Vítek > On Sat, 28 Aug 2021 at 19:57, Vítek Novotný <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hello all, > > > > in Knuth's TeX, trailing spaces are removed very early on when a line is > > being put to the input buffer. [1] According to Eijkhout's TeX by > > Topic, this is because "these spaces are hard to see in an editor" [2]. > > > > [1]: https://texdoc.org/serve/tex.pdf/0#page=15 > > [2]: http://mirrors.ctan.org/info/texbytopic/TeXbyTopic.pdf > > > > I develop and maintain the Markdown package [3] for plain TeX, ConTeXt, > > and LaTeX. The package makes it possible to use the lightweight markup > > of markdown [4] in TeX documents. In markdown, a hard line break can be > > inserted by ending a line with two or more spaces. However, since > > trailing spaces are removed by TeX, hard breaks are only recognized when > > we' are inserting an external markdown file, not when markdown is typed > > in the top-level document. This deficiency is known and documented [5], > > but I am hoping we could resolve it with LuaTeX. > > > > [3]: https://github.com/witiko/markdown > > [4]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown > > [5]: > > https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/generic/markdown/markdown.pdf#page=20 > > > > In LuaTeX, the `process_input_buffer` callback [6] can be used to > > intercept the text coming *out* of the input buffer. However, the > > trailing spaces have already been removed by this point. > > > > By adding a callback right after a line has entered the input buffer > > [1], we could either replace the trailing space characters with tabs, > > or place a character such as the zero-width non-joiner (U+200C) to the > > right of the trailing spaces. > > > > [6]: https://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/luatex.pdf#page=176 > > > > Is this something you would consider---if not for LuaTeX then perhaps > > for LuaMetaTeX? > > > > Best regards, > > Vítek Novotný > >
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