I think there may be a market for a typesetting language that interacts directly with PostScript instead of LaTex + dozens of packages -> PDF or HTML + CSS + forcing pagination -> PDF. It would basically be a high level language that is compiled to PostScript and perhaps word, DVI and even HTML. I say there is a market for it because I imagine that there are many companies using a collection of hacked together scripts perhaps involving word-mailmerge to make their invoices and letters. Unless there is an industry standard I'm not aware of. LaTex I feel is "just enough" for whitepapers but breaks for almost anything past that. Document generation for example is impossible without using a templating engine. There's nothing wrong with that specificaly but it's limited in many ways that add up to it being an annoying experience. I've also used HTML/CSS -> PDF but there is no pagination by default. We need a real typesetting language.
great developers want to re-make tools + tools never pay well in the market => zealots and dreamers get glued to tedious toolchain managers for a short time, then retreat.. repeat
markets seek to reward initiative, but do reward great initiative, greatly? no, so the cycle will always repeat
source: I have a 3-ring binder from Adobe Systems that I picked up from their Embarcadero building, pre-Red Book.
I used a tool called AsciiDoctor (http://www.asciidoctor.org), which uses a markup called AsciiDoc. Its not Markdown, but similar. It works quite well, but is still missing some features like forced page breaks, the last time i used it about a year ago.
Not related to this article per se, but I wonder if there is a tool (or a market) for "validating" pdfs. Specifically I'm thinking of a tool that validates that different fields in a pdf have been filled. Sort of like "required" fields in a document that need to be filled for back office processing. I'm thinking about a recent experience where I had to send a pdf back and forth via email a couple times because some fields were missed each time. Perhaps an automated system would've caught this and saved everyone some time.
This is a lot like feeding JSON to a YAML parser. Barring the known edges, it works, but if that's normal, why the YAML parser?
Inlining a bit of HTML into Markdown is a good way to inject some forms Markdown doesn't support, but there's some tipping point where the Markdown is just in the way.
