[texworks] Help files for Scripting

[Henrik Skov Midtiby]

Dear Paul and Stefan,

Regarding the difference between markdown and bookdown it is mainly
related to the intended output.
Markdown is for smaller documents (ie. articles) whereas bookdown is
more suited for longer texts as books and reports.

Today I have been experimenting with the combination of bookdown,
github, travis-ci and github-pages.
It should support the workflow of changing a single text file in the
git repository and then travis-ci should update the published book.
It is still not working as I would like, but it seems doable.
I have written a few notes about the process here
https://github.com/henrikmidtiby/bookdown-testing/blob/main/00-texworks-scripting.Rmd

What I try to achieve is to host a bookdown on github pages on this address.
The book present there at the moment was "compiled" on my own computer
through RStudio.
https://henrikmidtiby.github.io/bookdown-testing/
Unfortunately the site is not available right now due to a server issue.

I will get back with an update in a few days.

/Henrik


On Fri, 4 Jun 2021 at 16:03, Paul A Norman <paul.a.norman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Stefan,
>
> Really appreciate you taking the time to address this, and your suggestion sounds really valuable.
>
> Having everything together – TeXworks msnual and the API help (TwScript :-) would be great.
>
> Henrik's suggestion on Bookdown looks very good. I should not be surprised if that could some how be used to some useful degree in a GitHub environment.
> The extended MD syntax of Bookdown certainly looks very useful.
>
> Even if the MD source files were to be taken client side and put through Pandoc, and the results uploaded back to the Git hub repository, we'd still have a central editable repository for the source files.
>
> I know that MD —> Pandoc produced html can also be uploaded to GitHub as a static website.
>
> I might be out of touch for just a few days. If Henrik is still following this thread, his thoughts and others' might also be valuable at this point.
>
> There may be other options for a compliant repository for theBookdown MD, perhaps others might chime in here, the Bookdown reccomendation I think handles everything out of the box for "post-production" (html pdf docx) I think(?)
> If that is not essential then GitHub would be great.
>
> I do believe that the application I've been using to make the TwScript API help – html pdf etc. – HelpnDoc, can throw out MD (I think that they list three available dialects) so that may give us a base to start from using the work already done to date to seed the new project.
>
> Going forward I could put a redirect on the existing TwScript api web site as well.
>
> If we can settle on simillar if not identical processes for the TeXworks main manual, and repository, it would make a lot of sense.
>
> There may be a way to process the existing TeXworks manual's work to MD to seed it's initial project as well.
> If not from pure LaTeX(?) then initially from the html to MD may be feasible.
>
> Seems things are starting to look good on this documenation front overall :-)
>
> Paul
>
> On Saturday, 5 June 2021, Stefan Löffler <st.loeffler at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear Paul,
> >
> > sorry for not writing sooner, busy as always... :/
> >
> > On 30.04.21 09:40, Paul A Norman wrote:
> >
> > Thanks Henrik,
> > That is certainly very helpful.
> > "A nice example is the bookdown R package, that makes it easy to suggest a change to a book through a github pull request.
> > You can see it in action here —
> > https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown/
> > I know that other LaTeX documentation is produced through intermediary formats, and this one is looking like a good approach.
> >
> > We may need, whatever option is followed, some sort of "safe" server, as all too often for commercial or other reasons, public "free" hosting options are withdrawn often with little or no warning. May be in this case the situation is safer?
> >
> > If it helps, I can definitely create a new repository on Github in the "TeXworks organization" and give you write access to it.
> >
> > In fact, I was going to propose to look into the markdown support for Github Pages (i.e., writing stuff in markdown, publishing it to Github, and getting it rendered nicely). The result would be something akin to https://stloeffler.github.io/texworks-testing/ (the theme is customizable ;)), though probably at a url similar to texworks.github.io/js-api-doc.
> >
> > I am quite happy to just dive into any realistic option, and MarkDown as provided up by Bookdown is looking like a very viable option indeed.
> >
> > Not sure what the differences (benefits) are between MarkDown and BookDown...
> >
> > Anyway, please let me know what you find, as I have been toying with the idea of converting the "main" manual to markdown as well (for easier writing, editing, and conversion to multiple formats).
> >
> > HTH
> > Stefan
> >