Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Yes, but you hate anything that requires being paid for or subscribed to, etc. You don't "hate" Word out of some peculiar dislike of it, itself.
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Folks can cut themselves off from Word, for philosophical reasons (Tex) [...]
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Heh, yep. For the most part, for the most part.
Locking your documents into proprietary formats, bad, bad idea!
* * *
Also, another thing to remember.
Creating books is an entire process. It's not just a single author typing away.
This book then gets passed on through multiple hands:
- Editors
- Typographers
- Indexers
- Ebook-specialists
- [...]
The more obscure and technical your workflow becomes, the harder (and more expensive) it becomes to find people with that specific mix of skills to work on your book.
* * *
For example, there was a very complicated Thermodynamics book worked on:
Typed in LaTeX. With dozens of complicated Figures + hundreds and hundreds of equations.
You needed to find someone who:
1. Knew enough about LaTeX to even read the thing.
(A normal editor won't know that.)
2. Knew enough about Maths/Physics to be able to parse the equations (and correct the markup if needed).
(A normal editor won't know that.)
3. Knew enough about Mathematical/Scientific typography to:
- Correct spacing within equations
- Quad spaces, Em Spaces, aligning to equals/plus/minus signs, etc.
- Making sure your "sin" and "cos" are Roman
- Constants/Constants within equations aren't accidentally Italic type
- Italics in equations are reserved for variables
- Bolding your vectors in Physics.
- Properly typesetting Units ("220 km", "3 m", "2.52 kg").
- SI Units require a NON-BREAKING or THIN SPACE between.
- Correcting chemical formulas like "H2O" or "SO4".
- Or dealing with ions/isotopes with prescripts + postscripts (superscripts+subscripts before/after the formula).
(A normal typographer won't know that.)
4. Understand how to read LaTeX Equation Numbers + Cross-References.
(A normal editor won't know that + these are
very easy to make mistakes in, even for advanced users.)
5. You couldn't just run typical tools/methods on the LaTeX:
- Most normal spellcheckers + grammarcheckers completely begin to choke once working on complicated markup.
Sure, you might be able to export to DOCX, have the editor run their tools on it, but now you have the "bifurcation" problem. You have to now duplicate all those corrections back from DOCX->Markdown.
So you'll needed someone who was able to "see through the matrix" of the markup, to normalize the text + catch tons of minor errors... hopefully making corrections right within the source document.
* * *
Anyway, after I woke up today, I also thought back to fantastic WYSIYM editors that let you "see through the matrix" of markup.
That guy's Reddit post from 2 years ago still completely blows me away:
I also
wrote about some of that in 2019 + or
a few LaTeX WYSIYM examples in 2017 (emacs+AUCTeX).
Again, I was scratching my head this morning.
Why limit yourself to these crippled Markdown editors like Ulysses. Why not just go full-on emacs/vim... then you could fully customize all the Markdown to your heart's content.
And WYSIYM still means the underlying plaintext markup is there, just much much easier to visualize.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
For a variety of production reasons, we live and die with that level of TC detail. Incredibly useful in a bookmaking environment in which you deal with authors. (We use a flow method, with a Word file generated by InDesign, to intake and place revisions from the authors.)
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You've been winning me over, moving my needle, (slightly), over the years. :P
I don't hate Word/InDesign as much as I once did.
I still won't go around promoting them as my top choice, but I definitely see lots of the pros that I previously blinded myself to.
Like, if it was in my ideal world, we'd all be working in the HTML.
But then you hit the reality, and see that:
- 99% of Authors don't know how to use Styles.
- Let alone using them perfectly consistently.
- 99% of Editors "only work in Word"
- And your precious markup will be lost/mangled.
- 90%+ of Typographers "only know InDesign".
- And a huge proportion don't use Styles.
- 99% of Indexers don't even use auto-updated Indexes.
- Hard enough finding one that would work directly in the digital files (and not a finalized PDF). Good luck finding one that'll know your specific brand of markup.
- 99% of people can't read intermediate/semi-advanced Math.
- You put a formula in their book? Their eyes glaze over. They're GONE!
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