
Emacs for Writers (2015) [video] - tarboreus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU
======
melling
I have several Emacs for Writers links in my GitHub notes:

[https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes/blob/master/emacs.org](https://github.com/melling/EditorNotes/blob/master/emacs.org)

------
JoshMnem
That video helped me get Org Mode working in a usable way. It's worth spending
a weekend on setting it up, especially capture templates.

------
ehudla
The following lines from my makefile illustrate two tricks I enjoy.

%.pdf: %.text

pandoc -F pandoc-zotxt -F pandoc-citeproc $< -o $@

%.draft.pdf: %.text

pandoc -F pandoc-zotxt -F pandoc-citeproc --template=draft $< -o $@

(1) Automatically grabbing citation details from Zotero. (2) Using the
extension of the requested output file to choose the appropriate template.

Not emacs specific, of course.

------
ehudla
His emacs customization apparently: [https://github.com/incandescentman/Emacs-
Settings](https://github.com/incandescentman/Emacs-Settings)

------
krylon
I once tried to write a novel, and I used emacs, too. It was fun, at least the
emacs part, but I was already a loyal emacs user at that point.

IMHO, Emacs is a very good text editor, and that is what writing is all about,
is it not?

~~~
chipotle_coyote
It is, but unless you're doing it all on your own, writing a _novel_ is also
about working with editors and typesetters. (Or formatters, or whatever you
want to call the typesetter equivalent for an ebook.) In my experience, at
least in the fiction world, these folks are going to expect you to be using
Microsoft Word, and you'd better have a tool that can generate Word-compatible
files formatted to the industry standard -- and that supports Word-compatible
comments and revision tracking well enough to "round trip" documents
transparently.

I'm a big fan of open data formats and plain text markup, and I write a lot of
fiction in Markdown. I love this notion in principle. But I suspect it's a lot
easier to put into practice when everyone involved in your book's production
is down with your toolchain -- which may mean everyone involved in your book's
production is you.

(For the record, I convert the Markdown to rich text and do final formatting
in Apple Pages for manuscripts that I'm submitting somewhere else. For
novella-on-up length work, though, I'm one of those annoying Scrivener
converts.)

~~~
nextos
With Pandoc you can convert from _many_ formats to many other formats,
including DOCX and PPTX.

Nothing prevents you from using Emacs, or Vi(m), write in Markdown, Org or
whatever and deliver a DOCX.

The amazing thing is that you can even work with people that use Word track
changes, while staying in Emacs, Vi(m) or any other text editor and using
Pandoc.

~~~
bitwize
Suck it up and use Word. Your editor is going to want to back-and-forth that
manuscript with you, adding annotations as necessary, and it's much easier to
just do it all within Word than to import/export to some other tool that
cannot guarantee 100% compatibility.

When it comes to producing text for humans to read, there's a tool that
virtually everybody uses and that's Word. You will simplify your life
considerably by using it, too.

~~~
nextos
There's no reason why my editor would see I'm using Pandoc in a back and forth
exchange if we use a decent DOCX template. Furthermore, DOCX is an open
format, and I don't have the luxury of a Windows or Mac machine plus an Office
license.

In fact, all documents I typeset with Pandoc -> DOCX look like really
carefully typeset documents on Word because the style is so consistent and in
line with what latest versions of Word encourage: separation of content and
presentation.

~~~
emgee_1
You probably want then to exchange both the .org file and .docx file and let
them make changes to the .org file. They will quickly see how the docx file
looks very much the same to the .org file Then you can diff the modified .org
file with the original. Using git you incorporatecthe changes

~~~
nextos
That's the ideal situation, but I'm often interacting with people that have
trouble using Word, let alone Git! They don't even know what a VCS is.

------
w0m
I love vim but i want orgmod (or equiv..) badly. :(

I should bite the bullet and learn EVIL...

~~~
molloy
There's really not much to learn!

~~~
mitchty
I switched from vi/vim to emacs just for org mode. Took about a year but now I
can't see going back. Its not that bad, and org mode is definitely worth it.

