Latex can't produce web output, which is increasingly a target I want.
Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX). The PDFs latex produces are probably the least accessible format available (much worse than a word proeuced pdf, or some html). This matters to me, and should matter more to other people (in my opinion).
BUT that is what makes Pandoc powerful. You convert your latex or your whatever into: (Can we please add Racket's Scribble? It is by far the reason why Racket has the best documentation of any language. https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/)
Markdown, reStructuredText, textile, HTML, DocBook, LaTeX, MediaWiki markup, TWiki markup, TikiWiki markup, Creole 1.0, Vimwiki markup, OPML, Emacs Org-Mode, Emacs Muse, txt2tags, Microsoft Word docx, LibreOffice ODT, EPUB, or Haddock markup to
HTML formats
XHTML, HTML5, and HTML slide shows using Slidy, reveal.js, Slideous, S5, or DZSlides
Word processor formats
Microsoft Word docx, OpenOffice/LibreOffice ODT, OpenDocument XML, Microsoft PowerPoint.
Ebooks
EPUB version 2 or 3, FictionBook2
Documentation formats
DocBook version 4 or 5, TEI Simple, GNU TexInfo, Groff man, Groff ms, Haddock markup
Archival formats
JATS
Page layout formats
InDesign ICML
Outline formats
OPML
TeX formats
LaTeX, ConTeXt, LaTeX Beamer slides
PDF
via pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex, pdfroff, wkhtml2pdf, prince, or weasyprint.
Well, except LaTeX probably isn't the best base format to write in -- Pandoc's LaTeX parser isn't very good, it doesn't parse (from a quick check) any of the papers I've written. They've tried hard, but I think it's a losing battle, particularly once people start using a large range of packages.
That's not surprising -- it's basically impossible to "parse" LaTeX, as it's defined by execution.
iirc pandoc's markdown provides the set of functionality that one is capable of transforming back and forth. So as long as you stay within those formatting confines, you are set.
This works for everything except table notes a la ```threeparttable```
What about htlatex? It is quite powerful. In most of the cases, it produces nice HTML pages out of the box, with automatic rendering of figures and mathematical equations into PNG. It is part of most LaTeX distributions. On Linux, for example, just type
For me, at least, htlatex never works just quite right. There are a lot of edge cases where it's broken. If you want to preserve having non-PDF output, starting in something like Pandoc Markdown is a better idea. And I do most of my documents in regular LaTeX.
>Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people
This sounds like it should definitely be a target of a grant. I guess most government organisations around the world are using Word et al, which isn't too bad these days accessibility wise (AFAIK).
Can you provide a small example of a LateX document that produces an inaccessible PDF?
If you grab any academic paper (particularly two columns) there is a good chance getting the text out will be hard, and any part of the paper with maths or tables will be unusable. Sorry. I'm away from a computer now, to make a smaller example.
Any chance you could post the source code for this? It's using bitmaps for characters instead of proper fonts, which shouldn't happen nowadays. Maybe you should put "\usepackage{lmodern}" at the start? See for example https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1291/why-are-bitmap-...
I work with course materials made in Latex, and students sometimes need/want to copy and paste from them, so I try to avoid these kinds of problems.
Accessibility is a big current push from the TeX Users Group. The president, Boris Veytsman, has made moving it forward a big goal. I know that a lot of people are working on aspects of that, but the name I hear the most is Ross Moore, who I have heard talk on making the output be PDF/A-3a compliant. I understood that it is a long way there.
I hope so, because honestly, Tex generated PDFs are the single biggest problem with being a blind researcher (I'm not blind, but I know a blind researcher).
Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX). The PDFs latex produces are probably the least accessible format available (much worse than a word proeuced pdf, or some html). This matters to me, and should matter more to other people (in my opinion).