
Ask HN: Simpler alternatives to LaTeX for note system - dapperone
Wondering if others could share some ideas about typing up notes - workflow, software, typesetting system wise? Preferably options that will output to PDF and are command-line oriented.<p>Currently have some notes in mostly plaintext with some LaTeX markup in it. It renders fine, but  its difficult to maintain.<p>I&#x27;d like to try out a different workflow software &#x2F; typesetting wise. ConTexT seems to be a viable option. The sytax is an improvement for me anyways.<p>I&#x27;ve looked into lightweight markup but some don&#x27;t seem very flexible or have long dependencies. Org-Mode might be a good choice but I&#x27;m mostly used to working with Vim.<p>Wiki and Note-taking systems (notebooks) systems don&#x27;t appeal to me much, though I&#x27;ve seen they are popular.<p>There are several on-going or deprecated projects that are of interest, mostly &#x27;Tex engine replacements. (I&#x27;ve spent more than a few hours searching through many linked on Wikipedia like here https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Typesetting and some more obscure ones. I like some of the Scheme and OCAML projects, but all seem to be difficult to compile on several systems I tried.<p>So, other than ConTeXt, I&#x27;m considering Org-Mode.<p>Is there another option being overlooked?
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flukus
Markdown is pretty good as a lightweight format, but if you already know latex
it's not going to be a huge improvement. If you care about fancy output then
it won't be as good, but you can output to html with you're own css.

There is a vim plugin for org mode syntax, just with very little of the
functionality.

IME with workflow tools you've already hit the 90% functionality with 10% of
the work part and trying to chase that last 10% actually results in poorer
solutions.

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jareds
Markdown with pandoc. I use it to generate basic PDF's and it works fine.
Links don't appear to work though.

