[Tfug] Lightweight markup languages?

[JD Rogers]

What a coincidence, I have been struggling with this a lot lately as well.

[snip]
> The use-case is the production of relatively simple documents that I
> need to exchange with academic colleagues who are using MS Word.  I

This is always the trick, isn't it?

> want to be able to write my stuff in Emacs, convert it, and send it to
> them.  The ideal situation would be if I could take whatever they send
> back to me and convert it into something Emacs-readable, but I think
> there's too much risk of losing Word-specific formatting.  So, I'm
> stuck with OOo on that end (though, if anybody has any thoughts here,
> I'd love to hear them).

The more I use OOo, the less I like it. I think the team has done a
wonderful job of making a word clone which comes complete with all the
pain and suffering associated with using word. So far, it seems like
my only option though.

One option that I have convinced some of my coauthors to use is to
send the the PDF from latex and the newest version acrobat (even the
free version) allows one to add comments. I ask my colleagues to write
the're suggestions and changes as comments on the pdf and return it to
me to incorporate into the document. This may not work well for bigger
docs and larger contribution from others though.

> For more complex pieces, I write in LaTeX and do a LaTeX -> HTML ->
> OOo -> DOC conversion.  A bit hairy but seems to work.  (ht4tex
> provides a LaTeX -> ODF script but it no longer works, which is a
> shame.)

Interesting, I had never tried that.. I just did it with my paper, and
latex2html seems to png-ify the equations which is fine except when
you have inline variables. It also seems to choke on EPS images.
*shrug*, might be nice for some docs.


So allow me to rant a moment:
I just submitted a paper using the _publisher_provided_ latex
template. Turns out, their template produces a document that does not
conform to the submission requirements. Then, after working around
those issues and jumping through bibtex hoops, it got to typsetting.

I have no idea what commercial stuff (maybe framemaker?) they use for
typsetting, but my document looked 'pretty', and what I got back was..
well, a steaming pile. Equations were completely mangled. I wrote in
to ask what went wrong and, get this, the editor said they copy edit
using _hard_copy_!!!! My coauthor just shook his head and said "you're
doing it wrong" as in http://xkcd.com/463 .

He did mention they are getting more and more submission in latex
though. I'm kind of surprised by that comment as, sadly,  I would have
almost expected the opposite trend.

Ok, I feel better now.
Cheers,
JDR