[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Artie

@Tex2002ans*I'm afraid I hate Word [...]. I prefer Markdown instead. Thank you.

Me too. But Markdown is crappier for:

• Tables
• Footnotes
• Formulas
• Images/Captions/Figures
• Cross-references
• Colors
• [...]

and quite a few other things too.

Originally Posted by j.p.s

At some point, one has to wonder why not write markdown directlly in any text editor one likes and directly convert that to EPUB with pandoc.

Exactly. That's one way to do things.

Like I write all my posts here (and on Reddit) in Markdown.

I write all my in-depth book changelogs in Markdown.

Basic/Intermediate things, I hugely prefer Markdown.

But once you begin to need (or require) more complicated things along those edges... Markdown doesn't cut it.

* * *

Anyway, here was a relevant talk given last year by pandoc's creator:

• TUG 2020: "John MacFarlane — Pandoc for TeXnicians"

It was mostly focused on converting LaTeX to other formats via pandoc (and trying to convince LaTeX users to use his markdown instead)...

... but he covers a lot of Input->pandoc->Output workflows, like:

• Markdown (pandoc's flavor) -> pandoc -> Output formats
• LaTeX -> pandoc -> Output formats
  
  • And Input formats -> pandoc -> LaTeX... showing off round-tripping.

and showing off various advanced tips/tricks when dealing with complicated use-cases.

MacFarlane also describes a lot of pandoc's disadvantages + current pain points. (Lots of edge cases that pandoc cannot handle well [or at all].)

In his own words, pandoc is "a jack of all trades, a master of none".

Originally Posted by Artie

@phillipgessert*@j.p.s*@jmurphy Thank you for understanding that I prefer to work with Markdown.
You have shared an interesting
resource:*https://www.markdownguide.org/tools/

Pandoc's Markdown would probably be the most fully featured (although I haven't ventured too far into all the various types).

You can even enable "Extensions"—enabling better footnotes, alternate tables, etc.

Originally Posted by Artie

Now, if somebody can point me to a resource for CSS for tables for EPUB, would be great.

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Just stick with the basic HTML.

The proper <th> + <td> is the most important.

(Completely Optional) You can add <thead> if you want. This would allow the headings to duplicate if a pagebreak occurs within the table.

If you want to get "fancier", then create basic classes for alignment:

- left
- center
- right

First   Last          Number
Joe     Brownstone         5
Tex     Testerson        100

Spoiler:

  <table>
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th class="left">First</th>
        <th class="left">Last</th>
        <th class="right">Number</th>
      </tr>
    </thead>
    
    <tbody>
      <tr>
        <td class="left">Joe</td>
        <td class="left">Brownstone</td>
        <td class="right">5</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td class="left">Tex</td>
        <td class="left">Testerson</td>
        <td class="right">100</td>
      </tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>

Of course, you can get more complicated than that:

• add vertical spacing
• OpenType features (like Tabular or Lining Numbers)
• or use more advanced CSS3

as long as you keep in mind fallbacks...

But Alignment. Alignment's about as fancy as I get with my <table>s nowadays.

(Personally, in my case, I'm only reproducing what I'm given. I don't have free range to completely redo tables with proper typography.)

(Although if I was in charge of retypesetting tables for Print, then of course I'd use LaTeX w/ booktabs + siunitx + all the fancy stuff.)

Originally Posted by Hitch

Didn't you say that you'd worked with HTML for years? Given that Word (and LO, OO, etc.)'s "styles" are nothing but CSS...doesn't that seem a little odd to you? It's not like Styles came out of the blue. They exist quite simply because they are CSS. CSS that you control, not some invisible man behind the curtain.

Yep, and if you understand CSS, Styles should come second nature.

If you use Styles cleanly and consistently, the HTML coming out of Word/LibreOffice actually is pretty clean.

(And you can use fantastic tools like Toxaris's EPUBTools to get extremely minimal HTML + even carry over all the exact class names for you! Plus lots of other helpful EPUB things.. like mass export Equations to SVG/MathML.)

Code/Text Comparison

Another nice advantage of these more "visual" editors is... much easier to compare documents or edit without having to "look through the matrix".

This especially becomes apparent when working with paragraph-sized interweaving layers of corrections.

Word Compare

A few months back, I stumbled upon this video for Microsoft Word:

• "Word: Advanced Track changes & collaboration tricks"
  
  • The first 1:30 is all that's important, the rest is pretty junk.

I never really saw someone fiddle with the various levels of "Show Markup".

Word's Compare (or Track Changes) is actually quite good when working on books.

(Especially if you go digging into "Track Changes Options > Advanced Options".)

LibreOffice Compare

LibreOffice's Compare is... brutal. (Although they are taking a few steps in the right direction... 7.3 is introducing lots of Track Changes fixes+enhancements).

Git + Beyond Compare + Others

Most of these other tools were designed for comparing LINES. Short lines of code.

(Yes, the problems can be mitigated somewhat in your source files by methods like "a sentence per line" and/or strict git control [committing after every little change].)

But the technical level of these tools is also usually... quite high. Not a method for 99.99% of authors.

Side Note #2: I wrote about Beyond Compare + a few other comparison methods back in:

• 2017: "Does any free software compare epubs?"

and I swear I wrote about comparison tools more often, but I couldn't find my old posts very quickly. (Maybe I wrote it in emails many years ago, and haven't mentioned it since?)