[Ach] Lower the participation threshold: stop using latex

Alice Wonder alice at librelamp.com
Tue Apr 25 19:07:39 CEST 2017


On 04/25/2017 10:02 AM, Johannes Burk wrote:
> Regarding to the discussion about bringing some breath of fresh air into this project we should also think about of how to reduce the threshold of participating.
> Beside the ideas already mentioned by some on this list (an explicit call for help/contributions and providing a guide about how to contribute) I want to propose a slightly more drastically step: Stop using latex and switch to a more intuitive and human readably language, making contributions as easy as editing a wiki page. But we have not to stop using latex completely nor abandon the PDF as the final product. It’s just necessary to rethink the build chain. Using markdown as the language to write the document (or maybe just as an option for contributions) and a converter like pandoc would allow to easily contribute but also using latex for advanced formatting and get a PDF as the final product.
>
> I saw there was already a thread about conversion to markdown/RST a year ago (march 2016). But the discussion ended without any final conclusions.
>
> Just my two cents,
> Johannes (a silent listener on this list, so I’m sorry for using the “we” phrasing)
>

As someone who absolutely loves LaTeX - I have to agree that markdown is 
probably a better choice.

LaTeX really shines when you need to typeset something, especially 
including math and figures and what not, but even though I love it - 
very often the KISS approach of markdown is superior.


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