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README.md

What is this?

This is a scratchpad. It has many mistakes and speculations. It will get messier as I learn more.

How do I build this?

You need pdflatex (and maybe some more other stuffs).

./make

What is all this XML stuff?

This is a failed attempt at creating an authoring system.

What I was trying to do: In 2017, I was looking for an authoring format. I was using Jekyll Markdown, and GFM math markup sucked. I wanted to write everything in XML, and write XSLT and XQuery to transform the XML into a HTML website. I shopped around, and saw DITA and DocBook, but none of them seems satisfactory about math markup, so I tried to design my own XML. I used IntelliJ IDEA to edit XML, XSD, XSLT, and XQuery.

It seemed like a good idea. I even bragged to my friends that I wrote everything in XML. In hindsight, it was the worst idea I ever had. IntelliJ IDEA is an overkill for XML editing, and XML requires that ampersands and less-than signs be escaped. Escaping hurts me a lot when I'm writing an inline LaTeX fragment in XML.

I sank a considerable amount of effort into this shit. My 2018 self murderously hates my 2017 self for this XML ordeal. I wish I had known org-mode earlier.

Lessons learned:

  • Reuse existing solutions.
  • Empathize with future self.
  • Don't settle for anything worse than org-mode + pandoc + make. Never author these in XML by hand: a book, a wiki, a knowledge base, a note, a website, or any a significant amount of writing. Prefer a lightweight markup with good LaTeX support and good tool support.

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Copyright 2017 Erik Dominikus