Deyan Ginev edited sectionTurn_the_Page.tex  about 9 years ago

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It is also common to use one part of the technology stack to refer to the entire stack\footnote{An example of a technological use of \href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy}{metonymy}}. Namely, MarkDown usually implies creating an HTML document, while {\LaTeX} implies a PDF document. It is important to keep in mind that while they are traditionally used together, these are separate technologies that can be re-appropriated. It is possible to both create PDF documents from MarkDown, as well as HTML documents from {\LaTeX}, but those are the current exceptions, rather than the rule.  I will only look into the typesetting side in this post, as I plan to write a separate entry for my thoughts on authorship UX. For now it is enough to note that MarkDown is incredibly simple to learn and use, as it has a minimal set of typesetting commands (e.g. sectioning, math, tables) to obtain a good looking document. {\LaTeX} on the other hand is a full-blown programming language with a \href{http://www.ctan.org}{vast ecosystem} of extra features and extensions, which allows you to customize anything  %}  \subsection*{Pixels and Trees}  As Alberto and Nate point out in \href{https://authorea.com/users/3/articles/4675/_show_article}{LaTeX was not built for the Web}, all {\LaTeX} commands eventually target a printed page, which is just an array of pixels. The complex process of forming and stacking horizontal and vertical boxes, computing line- and page-breaks and carefully aligning and kerning various structures eventually results in a list of points with absolute positioning, in a printer-friendly language.