For the Writers

[TacticalCoder]

My personal recommendation:

- Compose text using a plain text format like Markdown, reStructuredText, or AsciiDoc. (I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper)
- Use plain text tools for version control and collaboration (for example, git and github).
- If your layout needs are simple, just convert to HTML/ePub/LaTeX/whatever and go
- If your layout needs are more sophisticated and you want something to use snazzy typography, use a real typesetting tool like InDesign

Interestingly, while this thread was going on, one of the author of "Pro Git" published a blog explaining his entire workflow.

I take it everyone interested in this thread probably wants to read it:

"Living the Future of Technical Writing - The amazing adventures and final toolchain of Pro Git, 2nd Edition"

https://medium.com/@chacon/living-the-future-of-technical-writing-2f368bd0a272

(link right above hopefully fixed thanks to SpamRay)

The one big difference I see between today and more than ten years ago is that today you'll kinda often want to target both physical books, ebooks, PDFs, Web, etc. So this influences the workflow.

When I compare his workflow to the one I used back in the days, I'm jealous: I'd print the book in full, drop it either at my publisher or directly at the person doing the proof-reading. Then a few days later I'd get the hundreds of sheets of papers back, with corrections in red and I'd painfully enter them page by page in Quark XPress!

I 100% agree with people pointing out here that Word is useless for typesetting.  A word processor can be okay as long as you're not the person doing the typesetting but then again if you target books + ebooks / PDFs + HTML you'll need to use something like Markdown or asciidoc and then create or reuse a "workflow" of transformation that suits you.

Guys, you're giving me the envy to start writing books again! 

[SpAmRaY]

https://medium.com/@chacon/living-the-future-of-technical-writing-2f368bd0a272

FTFY 

[CPTBadAss]

As a minor aside, TacticalCoder, the National Novel Writing Month is coming up and I think I'm going to do it. Perhaps you can join in on the adventure? I'm probably going to write in Word or Scrivener .

[dorkvader]

I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper

That's really all I was writing, so that explains why I found LaTeX so handy for it.

I really agree with your workflow. Compose text using the programs designed for it. Collaborate using the systems written for it. Typeset with the programs needed for it. Very much the unix philosophy (every program does one thing and does it well).

[TacticalCoder]

As a minor aside, TacticalCoder, the National Novel Writing Month is coming up and I think I'm going to do it. Perhaps you can join in on the adventure? I'm probably going to write in Word or Scrivener .

Oh that sounds great but... I've been writing "computer" books: books about Linux, about programming, etc. So I'm an "author" in that in the past I've been published but... I'm not really an author: I didn't write any fiction / novels. Moreover I'm a native french speaker: it would be really hard for me to write an entire novel in english!

Good luck with your novel and if you finish it, let us know when it is out 

[jacobolus]

I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper

That's really all I was writing, so that explains why I found LaTeX so handy for it.

I think LaTeX is great, it’s just a steeper learning curve than necessary for many purposes. For anything where >20% of the content is formulas, LaTeX is of course the only reasonable choice.

[CPTBadAss]

Oh that sounds great but... I've been writing "computer" books: books about Linux, about programming, etc. So I'm an "author" in that in the past I've been published but... I'm not really an author: I didn't write any fiction / novels. Moreover I'm a native french speaker: it would be really hard for me to write an entire novel in english!

Good luck with your novel and if you finish it, let us know when it is out 

I'm using the occasion to force myself to write more in general and to try out fiction writing. You could write yours in French of course as I'm sure my French novel would be atrocious ).

[dorkvader]

I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper

That's really all I was writing, so that explains why I found LaTeX so handy for it.

I think LaTeX is great, it’s just a steeper learning curve than necessary for many purposes. For anything where >20% of the content is formulas, LaTeX is of course the only reasonable choice.

I recommend LYX for newbies who are used to a WYSiWYG (or "WYSiWYM" in the case of LYX) but I agree it's not for everyone.

Then again, most everyone doesn't really care enough to look for better answers. They like to say things like: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and try not to think.

Oh that sounds great but... I've been writing "computer" books: books about Linux, about programming, etc. So I'm an "author" in that in the past I've been published but... I'm not really an author: I didn't write any fiction / novels. Moreover I'm a native french speaker: it would be really hard for me to write an entire novel in english!

Good luck with your novel and if you finish it, let us know when it is out 

I'm using the occasion to force myself to write more in general and to try out fiction writing. You could write yours in French of course as I'm sure my French novel would be atrocious ).

I wrote a book in French once, called "L'avenir de Sam", it was not good.

If you were to write a beginning reader / early childhood book in french, I could probably read it just fine though.

[BlueNalgene]

As a minor aside, TacticalCoder, the National Novel Writing Month is coming up and I think I'm going to do it. Perhaps you can join in on the adventure? I'm probably going to write in Word or Scrivener .

More like National I Should Be Writing My Dissertation month.