format will change from LaTeX -> (CommonMark|AsciiDoc): which should we chose?

[Allison Randal]

On 08/16/2016 06:11 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> Yes, I didn't mean it would be a 100% manual process, but I suspect I
> want to go paragraph-by-paragraph anyway -- using a formatter and
> committing changes -- for other reasons.  There is another set of
> content-organization changes I want to make simultaneously with the
> format change, but I'll wait to expand on that point until we've
> sufficiently bikeshed Asciidoc vs. Markdown-ish. :)

The risk in that approach is leaving the document in an unusable state
for an extended period of time, while you find the TUITs to accomplish
all those other reasons. A single-pass format-only change is quick, and
also leaves the version control history in a cleaner state. You can make
all those other changes later.


On 08/16/2016 11:43 AM, John Sullivan wrote:
> I'm just surprised -- I wouldn't expect to see much change in
> contributions from changing the markup language. Can people say more
> about the target contributing audience here? Previous feedback received?

It's impossible to say for sure, since there are many potential reasons
people might not contribute. So, it could wind up as a big conversion
project with no real benefit.

> Or, maybe what I'm asking for here really is a project commitment to
> maintain a print-ready branch.

One thing to keep in mind, is that "print-ready" doesn't necessarily
mean "checked into version control in LaTex". I have written and edited
many books in a Markdown-like format (Perl Pod), with Makefiles checked
into each book's repo that built HTML, DocBook, LaTeX, and PDF (via
LaTeX) versions of the book. Other tech publishers follow similar
patterns. I also currently maintain an extensive set of strategy
documents in ReStructuredText, with Sphinx build files to generate HTML
and PDF (again, via LaTeX).

Allison