View source for Markup Languages and Note Taking/Meeting Notes 2017-10-16

{{:Markup Languages and Note Taking}}

==== Resources ====
===== Note-taking applications =====
* Xpad https://launchpad.net/xpad
* MATE Desktop Sticky Notes http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/applications

===== Markup Languages =====
* [[Wikipedia:Markup Language]] 
** [[Wikipedia:Standard Generalized Markup Language]]
** [[Wikipedia:HTML]]
** [[mediawikiwiki:Wikitext]]
** [[Wikipedia:Markdown]]
** [[Wikipedia:MoinMoin]]
** [[Wikipedia:YAML]]
** [[Wikipedia:LaTeX]]
** [[Wikipedia:DocBook]]
** [[Wikipedia:reStructuredText]]
** [[Wikipedia:AsciiDoc]]
* [http://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=2378 Hacker Public Radio 2378 :: Why Docbook?] [http://hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr2378.ogg Play]

===== Markup Editors =====
* Atom.io https://atom.io/
* Sublime Text https://www.sublimetext.com/
* Notepad++ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

----
On creating a standard Markup Language:
<div style="text-align:center;">
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png<br /> 
[https://xkcd.com/927/ Fortunately, the charging one has been solved now that we've all standardized on mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.]
</div>
----


==== Meeting Notes ====

===== Practices =====
* Bob edits notes directly into MediaWiki (but only at [[KWNPSA]])
** Has tried Sticky Notes, Xpad, not suitable
** mounts website locally, edits with his text editor, saves directly to website
** Writes notes in notebook, transcribes to wiki, then copies generated HTML source to destination website


* Steve's practice is to separate content from form
** Create content first, but in a way that it's easy to add formatting stuff later on
*** WordProcessing doesn't do that, tries to do them both
*** WP tries to be an operating system
*** On all principles, WP are bad 
*** But LibreOffice tries to fix that, its internal format is not proprietary
*** Valuable for 
** When writing, be concerned primarily with content, secondarily with syntax, format
*** Can always add typographical content (the markup) afterwards
** eg. Wordcount isn't really needed, can't do it accurately by examining marked-up text
** Steve uses his own markup, similar to Markdown, related to groff
*** Only worries about paragraph breaks and lists, maybe section headers
*** Does not want ML to interpret line breaks, unless there's two in a row
*** Always works in Linux, so LF only
** Steve uses AWK script to render text, 
*** But how to apply markup to a previous line?
** Uses VIMperator in Firefox to edit online content


* Kirk managed documentation in SGML using James Clark's DSSSL processor called "Jade" to generate [[Wikipedia:Rich Text Format|RTF]], TeX, PDF(?)
** DSSSL == [[Wikipedia:Document Style Semantics and Specification Language]]
** James Clark also wrote groff, modelled on SoftQuad troff
** Schema for SGML was DocBook
** None of which gave the results, so he used
** DocBook in [[Wikipedia:XML|XML]]
** Kirk wrote a stylesheet in [[Wikipedia:XSLT|XSLT]] to turn DocBook into XML for LibreOffice
*** "compiled" documentation, literally using "make"
** XML provides rigid consistency, important to typographers
** Also created WinHelp files with DSSSL
*** Also tried to create TeX files
** The important part is that a single source document created multiple output file formats


* Nick 
** Taking notes for school, 
*** OneNote can be handy, good for finding notes and subcategories
** Adapting different note taking for different purposes, even sticky notes
** Different apps are suitable to different purposes
** Short term is good with StickyNotes or Xpad
*** Version of StickyNotes with Win10 is colourizable
** November is NaNoWriMo month, 
*** Use OneNote is nice because it organizes a lot of notes, eg research, character development
*** But not for the actual manuscript, use a WP for that
** There's a StickyNotes app for Android: [https://f-droid.org/packages/#q=sticky%20notes Search F-Droid for "Sticky Notes"]
** Different situatation: Academic, professional, hobby -- all have different requirements, different needs
** How to do the website?
*** Not his website, done on webs.com
*** Needed to directly edit HTML in webs.com, no feature to FTP content
*** The webs.com HTML viewer is not so great, uses his browser to download source, converts to PDF for a rough idea, then copy'n'paste back into the site
** [https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ Notepad++] has nice indenting
** Nick's site is largely static, but needs to update meeting events
*** Gets content from HTML e-mail, imports to Word, saves as HTML, then massages by hand (Word generates very verbose HTML)
*** this is a pretty common technique with other SysAdmins


* Raymond
** Casual note taking (temporary), eg library cards
*** Needs to do it on the cellphone
*** Notetaker on iPhone
*** Google Keep on Android -- 
**** Has checklists! Good feature!
**** Google Notebook was good, no longer exists
*** Uses computer to enter content for reading on cell phone
** For serious notetaking
*** Started with text files, but that's a problem, eg. need diagrams, searching
*** Searchable is a top requirement
*** Offline use is important 
**** Bob has horror story: taking notes at KWNPSA directly into wiki, closed laptop, needed to recover document from browser cache
*** Organization is important, 
*** Re-ordering, re-sorting
** Javascript, programming
** Using [https://evernote.com/ Evernote] for a long time
*** Has a limit on the traffic, now restricted to two devices (annoying with Macbook, cell phone, office desktop)
*** Can search, even text in pictures.
*** Free (as in gratis)
*** Crossplatform
*** Evernote and StickyNote can synchronize!
** Tried OneNote years ago, didn't work well
*** Formatting or search ability wasn't good enough


* Mojtaba is not a heavy note taker
** Tried OneNote
** gedit and vim on the desktop
** Google Notes on the phone
** Plain text!
** Does programming with vim
*** just search through directories with egrep

===== General Musings =====
* Raymond has used Atom.io competitor [https://www.sublimetext.com/ Sublime Text]
* Mojtaba has used [https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim vundle] (package manager for vim)


* People using online apps to synchronize between devices
* OneNote does not have an import/export function
** Raymond can set up a channel ifttt ([https://ifttt.com/ If This Then That])
** But OneNote is too proprietary to get stuff out (export)


* Steve: Organize stuff in a file system to make it easy to find
** Doc files in one subdir, PDF in another, then create a "logfile" to locate stuff
** Keep notes organized by project, more concerned with content


===== Tech stuff =====
* How is a "schema" different from the ML?
** SGML and XML are serialization formats, taking data and turning it into one long stream of characters
** DocBook and [[Wikipedia:Darwin Information Typing Architecture|DITA]] are schemas that specify the allowable data elements eg, a [[Wikipedia:Document type definition|DTD]] in HTML or SGML
** XSLTProc using DocBook stylesheets to render HTML


* LaTeX is a superset for Tex
** Much more structured
** But easier to use
** And probably faster to describe things like formulas
** groff is pretty much the same syntax for marking up math
** Every computer science and math student needs to know TeX
** Built-in font is "Computer Modern"
*** But there are commands to change to any other font for better legibility
** Donald Knuth wrote "metafont" to create fonts, TeX to do page layout
** Tex is primarily layout and presentation, LaTeX adds semantics
*** Steve gives a brief overview of LaTeX document structure, logical and strict

* In typesetting
** Authors are just concerned about appearance
** Typesetters want more document structure
** groff is a typesetting language
** runoff for running online printers in the 1960s
** Bell Labs operating system created to generate output
*** "We'll write you a typesetting language", just need an OS so they created Unix
*** troff was the result "typeset and runoff"
**** Author died suddenly, Brian Kernighan needed to reverse-engineer the code, rewrote in C
*** SoftQuad got rights to the troff code, developed it before "SGML handbook", HoTMetaL
**** Tied to Coach House Press


* Reminiscing about the old days when you could still talk to people in charge of major industries
** Phototypesetting: Steve gives a brief history


* Mindmapping tools
** [https://www.freeplane.org/wiki/index.php/Home Freeplane]: 
*** Lots of features
*** Non-linear editing
*** decorate with icons
*** Lua scripting language
** [http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Freemind] is another
*** Both Java applications, for platform independence?
*** [https://www.mindjet.com/mindmanager/ Mindmanager] is a commercial version for Windows
** Similar to WP outlining feature
*** But you need to scroll up and down to find things


* Spectrum of file formats
** From binary data with human read-only output
** to readable input formats
** eg. [[Wikipedia:jSON|JSON]] format is not a good human-readable language
** eg. YAML is for machine readable, not human
** XML is not as human-readable as Markdown either
** Markdown is an incomplete language, can't deal with some formatting issues
*** Lists are a problem (but there is the pipe character
** Makes sense for XML to be more strict
*** Machine needs to read the [[Wikipedia:Document Object Model|DOM]]


* Sometimes meaning of document structure disappears for human readers when a stylesheet is applied that alters appearance


* Typographic needs a structure like XML
** Can contain markup content that is not rendered, but gives typographic instructions
*** eg. command to kern a paragraph
** Steve uses attributes as non-content typographic instructions
** If you need to pass structural data use XML
** Markup languages can target either humans or machines
** The more complicated the document structure, the more you need a non-human-readable format like XML
* Books with indices lend themselves to XML
** also bibliographies, very strict for punctuation and capitalization
** Steve can apply scripts to a document to apply structure, strip out what the author has done
*** Generate Tables fo Content from marked up content, don't cut'n'paste
*** DRY - Don't Repeat Yourself


* What is the format that uses separate lines for markup, eg.
<pre>
Heading
=======

Subheading
----------
</pre>



===== Requirements =====
* SGML and HTML and XML aren't meant for writing, but for semantic meaning
** More of an interchange format
** Editors need to be for getting content into the editor quickly
** Choose an editor or Markup Language for "pretty", how it appears
** or choose an editor/ML for semantic meaning


==== Future topics ====
* [[Scripting Languages]]
* [[Social Night]] in December, start earlier (6:00pm) for food!
* [[Internationalization, Localization]] Scheduled for May 2018
* [[Dark Web, Hidden Services]] Scheduled for April 2018
* [[Corporate Surveillance]] Scheduled for February 2018
* [[Fundraising]] Scheduled for Jan 2018
** Because [[KWNPSA]] may need to raise some funds ourselves in 2018!



[[Category:KWNPSA Meeting Notes]]