tag:support.fletcherpenney.net,2013-02-12:/discussions/questions/3218-academic-writing-workflow-scrivener-3-multimarkdownMultiMarkdown: Discussion 2021-05-09T18:18:07Ztag:support.fletcherpenney.net,2013-02-12:Comment/472377382019-05-06T15:47:57Z2019-05-06T15:47:57Zacademic writing workflow: Scrivener 3 + MultiMarkdown + ??<div><p>Jeff,</p>
<p>TeX/LaTeX is a complex system of programs. Powerful to be sure, but complex.</p>
<p>MultiMarkdown makes using LaTeX much easier, for the most common ~ 90% of things that most people do. But you still have to get into the weeds for the other 10%, or for customization of the "look and feel".</p>
<p>MultiMarkdown includes some configuration to handle a few basic setups (e.g. article, memoir, tufte, etc.) The idea is that you write using MultiMarkdown, and it handles things like bold, italics, lists, chapters, etc. for you.</p>
<p>If you want to use an existing template specific to a certain publisher, you would have to modify those templates to fit the file structure that would work with MultiMarkdown (this usually means splitting the template into a few different files).</p>
<p>My personal workflow:</p>
<ul>
<li>Use an editor (I use MultiMarkdown Composer of course) to write my document</li>
<li>The metadata in the document specifies which LaTeX "templates" are used (these are already installed on my system)</li>
<li>When I am ready to "publish", I use MultiMarkdown on the command line to convert from text -> LaTeX, and then to process the LaTeX. I use the <code>mmd2pdf</code> script to automate this.</li>
</ul>
<p>The conversion process takes a few keystrokes and a few seconds to run. This is all easy.</p>
<p>The time investment was spent getting the system up and running the way I like it, and getting the LaTeX templates working.</p>
<p>You can use any editor you want -- if it truly supports MultiMarkdown (some do, relatively few do so perfectly, except Composer of course) then you could just export to LaTeX directly. You'll definitely want to run LaTeX from the command line so you can see any errors and "debug" your document in order to fix them.</p>
<p>Only you can decide if the pay off is worth the effort required. For me, the quality of the documents I generate was definitely worth it, but not everyone cares. Some people think that Microsoft Word does a fine job and it's not worth spending time on something better.</p>
<p>If you decide to pursue it, there are tons of resources online for LaTeX and I've always been able to find someone who experienced the same problem I did and posted a fix somewhere. Scrivener's forums used to have an active MMD/LaTeX section. I'm not sure if they still do or not.</p>
<p>Fletcher</p>
<p>-- Fletcher T. Penney<br>
<a href="mailto:fletcher@fletcherpenney.net">fletcher@fletcherpenney.net</a></p></div>fletchertag:support.fletcherpenney.net,2013-02-12:Comment/472377382019-05-06T18:50:58Z2019-05-06T18:50:59Zacademic writing workflow: Scrivener 3 + MultiMarkdown + ??<div><p>Thanks for the quick reply Fletcher. That makes sense that most of the investment is spent getting the system up and working.</p>
<p>Can you elaborate on the second step in your workflow where the use of template files come into play?</p>
<p>When you say you use metadata in your document to specify which LaTeX 'template' to use ... do you mean the typical LaTeX files such as class files (.cls) and reference (.bib and .bst) files and the like which you have stored in your system directory? Thanks again.</p></div>Jefftag:support.fletcherpenney.net,2013-02-12:Comment/472377382019-05-07T15:53:03Z2019-05-07T15:53:03Zacademic writing workflow: Scrivener 3 + MultiMarkdown + ??<div><p><a href="https://fletcher.github.io/MultiMarkdown-6/syntax/metadata.html#latexconfig">https://fletcher.github.io/MultiMarkdown-6/syntax/metadata.html#lat...</a></p>
<p>F-</p>
<p>-- Fletcher T. Penney<br>
<a href="mailto:fletcher@fletcherpenney.net">fletcher@fletcherpenney.net</a></p></div>fletcher