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An editor for academic papers (xml, html, md, TeX, pdf and if you really need it rtf)

2015-03-16 18:53:44-04:00

editor txt editor xml

The problem is well known. How should an academic - and I speak here specifically for humanities researchers - write a paper? Is there a perfect tool for this?

Ok, I think everybody agrees that Microsoft Word is not an option for many reasons: too complicated, not trustworthy in the way it handles the coding of data, proprietary, and most of all not adapted for the needs of academics.

My preferred tool is LaTeX, but it is too complicated for most humanities scholars. And it has another big problem: it does not allow a basic xml markup.

Why do I need a new writing tool?

• in order to write in a light and stable environment
• in order to have a less expensive publishing process - if my article is published on the Erudit publishing platform, they currently have to convert manually my .doc to their xml schema!
• in order to have some well structured contents - having metadata!
• in order not to use proprietary software.

I explain what are the fundamental needs for me:

• the possibility of structuring the contents for their meanings and not for their graphical form
• the possibility of adding some markups and exporting it in a standard xml schema - and in my case more precisely eruditarticle
• the possibility of visualizing easily my text in a graphical form - in order to have some wysywyg form, necessary for most users
• the possibility of exporting in pdf
• the possibility of exporting in rtf - for those who cannot avoid it... which is often the case with some publishers
• the possibility of exporting it directly in html
• the possibility of having a very, very light source file - I mean: a plain text file more or less human understandable
• the possibility of making revisions and comments
• the possibility of managing bibliographies - in a BibTeX like environment, for instance* the possibility of having an inline spellchecker

A way to do this is suggested by Nikola Sander here

And it works. She suggests to use markdown and then pandoc to convert markdown - plus some not so complicated way to manage bibliographies.

But in this way it is impossible to manage xml.

Now, some good tools that one can use to realize my idea:

1. LaTeX
2. pandoc
3. Markdown
4. Qute
5. Wymeditor
6. brackets
7. Diffmerge
8. CWRC-Writer

My idea is to use a basic editor, like Qute, based on html or markdown, implementing the possibility of adding xml metadata in an easy way and then using pandoc in order to convert to all the other formats.

A possibility is to make an online and offline editor which allows also a quick online publication - after having selected a server and a database.

All suggestions are welcome!