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Alternative text editor

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Arno v. Lumig
Hello,

I need to write a lot of things for school (guides, book reports, essays etc), but I don't like the concept of "Word-style" editors. I am pretty good at writing/explaining things, but I'm not so good at making a good looking layout for the texts I write.
I was wondering if there is some kind of "text editor" that will automatically create markup? I was thinking about something html/CSS-like, but easier.
The idea is that I write the "html", and apply some standard "CSS" to it.

Something like LaTeX would be nice, but I'm not sure if that is what I want.

I hope something like this exists, so I don't have to mess around with ugly-looking documents anymore, and it would save me a great deal of time.

Thanks in advance,
Arno[/code]
smartpandian
If its text editor... I would recommend.. Notepad ++...
One of the Toprated opensource project in Source forge.
vinx_18
Code:
I was wondering if there is some kind of "text editor" that will automatically create markup?
You may want to consider Dreamweaver.
mOrpheuS
Arno v. Lumig wrote:
I need to write a lot of things for school (guides, book reports, essays etc), but I don't like the concept of "Word-style" editors. I am pretty good at writing/explaining things, but I'm not so good at making a good looking layout for the texts I write.
I was wondering if there is some kind of "text editor" that will automatically create markup? I was thinking about something html/CSS-like, but easier.
The idea is that I write the "html", and apply some standard "CSS" to it.

If it's you who'll have to create the css ultimately, how does moving from Word format to html/css save any effort ?
Or am I missing something ? Confused

Why not just use the pre-formatted templates that come with most advanced document editors (like Word) and just insert the content therein ?
Arno v. Lumig
smartpandian wrote:
If its text editor... I would recommend.. Notepad ++...
One of the Toprated opensource project in Source forge.


Did you even read my post? I am not looking for a plain-text text editor!

[quote="vinx_18]Code:
I was wondering if there is some kind of "text editor" that will automatically create markup?
You may want to consider Dreamweaver.[/quote]

Dreamweaver is there to create sites, and you'll have to create markup in the same way you have to create markup in Word in.

mOrpheuS, You misunderstood me, I am not talking about writing essays in HTML and CSS, I just compare my idea to HTML/CSS because it works somewhat how I would like the program/standard I'm looking for to work.
I will still have to write the "CSS" (note the apostrophes!), but only once. As soon as the "CSS" is done I can apply it to every essay I write using this program/standard.

I'll give you just a small example of an essay how it could be done in the program I'm looking for:


Code:

/style "Essaystyle.style"
/title "The title of my Essay"
/author "Arno"
/sub-title "Two hundred years ago blah happend, which caused lots of blah to be blahed. Now the same thing happens again, but what happened to the blah?"
/date "October 02 2007"
/paragraph
The contents of my essay, first paragraph
/paragraph
Second paragraph of this wonderfull essay
/quote "Sir Iamthaman"
Here comes to quote of Iamthaman
/endquote


I really hope that you get the point of my question now. Together with this "source" file there would be another "style" file, that will format this text complete with paragraph indents, a quote block, the date in a finer print etc...

My question remains: Is there any program or standard that will make it possible to write my essays like the example above, and let it automatically apply a pre-defined style to it.
mOrpheuS
Arno v. Lumig wrote:
mOrpheuS, You misunderstood me, I am not talking about writing essays in HTML and CSS, I just compare my idea to HTML/CSS because it works somewhat how I would like the program/standard I'm looking for to work.
I will still have to write the "CSS" (note the apostrophes!), but only once. As soon as the "CSS" is done I can apply it to every essay I write using this program/standard.

I actually understood what you were saying, I was also talking of html/css in the sense that you did - only missed the quote symbol. Razz

You do the formatting once, apply it to multiple documents.
This feature is already available in Word - save it as a template.
Or better yet, use one of pre-packaged templates that come with word!

In the end it's you who has to specify which way each part of text should be formatted - you either do it in Word's template styles OR you do it in the syntax as in the example you gave.

In my opinion, doing it in word template is much easier.

You just format one document, with all the text styles that you'll use - Heading, Author Name, Date, Normal Paragraph, Quote etc. - and save it as a template.
In the subsequent documents that you create using this template, you can just select a piece of text and apply one of these styles to it - quicker than having to type out the syntax, in my opinion.



I strongly believe doing it in a dedicated editor will save you more time.

But if you must - RTF, XML/XSLT, HTML/CSS are some syntax based formatting options that I can think of.
Arno v. Lumig
Thanks to everyone who tried to help. I read up some on TeX, and I think that is somewhat like what I am looking for. I did not know that Word could actually do "styles" the way you showed me, thanks mOrpheuS.

http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/beginlatex/

This tutorial/guide has been very helpful to me, I think that I'll just stick with LaTeX.

Thanks again.
mOrpheuS
Arno v. Lumig wrote:
http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/beginlatex/

This tutorial/guide has been very helpful to me, I think that I'll just stick with LaTeX.

Alright ! That seems to fit the bill. Smile

So how does it work ?
You do the formatting (using certain syntax), run the input through the LaTeX program and it outputs a PDF (or some other portable format) ?

If you can automate the process of applying LaTeX format syntax to multiple pieces of text, it can indeed be faster than WYSIWYG editors.
Arno v. Lumig
It's just like HTML and CSS Wink. You can use default styles (article, report, book or letter) and create your own/download new styles. Styles are .sty files. You write your text in a simple text editor, and save it as a .tex file.

A simple report could look like this:
Code:
\documentclass[a4paper, oneside]{report}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\renewcommand{\chaptername}{Hoofdstuk}
\renewcommand{\partname}{Deel}

\begin{document}
\title{Sample essay}
\author{Arno van L\"umig}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents

\chapter{First chapter}
In this chapter I will explain how sheeps sound, and how they tranfer their noise to your ears.
\section{How does sound work?}
Feel tha vibe1!!11one
\begin{figure}
\caption{My year}
\includegraphics[width=10cm]{myear}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Vibrating air}
\subsection{Tympanic membrane}

\section{Vocal cords}

\begin{abstract}
Conclusion
\end{abstract}

\end{document}


When running that document trough LaTeX you would actually get a .dvi file containing a title page, table of contents, several chapters and paragraphs. Chapters and paragraphs would be numbered aswell. It also does neat stuff like making sure that a title is not the last line on a page etc.

I recommend you to read the tutorial I posted above though, if you want to learn how to use (La)TeX.

Yours sincerely,
Arno
Da Rossa
Well, I know one good replacement for notepad: editor˛, that comes together with xplorer˛, a substitute for windows Explorer. But if you're talking about a more complete text editing utility, try OpenOffice (Writer, in particular). You'll like it! Wink
Arno v. Lumig
Da Rossa wrote:
Well, I know one good replacement for notepad: editor˛, that comes together with xplorer˛, a substitute for windows Explorer. But if you're talking about a more complete text editing utility, try OpenOffice (Writer, in particular). You'll like it! Wink


Read, then write. The title does not make up the whole post.
smartpandian
Another option, is that Mediawiki along with pdf export option.

that is, you can write book. in Media wiki.(software behind wikipedia)

Writing in Media wiki is similar to using a kind of markup language.(WIKI:Markup)

The advantage here, is that it can be used for two purpose & very large user community.

but ultimately, Latex & Wiki were used for different purpose...
azuwis
Try Emacs Muse, have a look at this site http://lynx.sao.ru/~karpov/ , it's made by Emacs Muse.
romaop
OK, you like a good presentation like that in a magazine? The professional solutions are Adobe InDesign (latest release is CS3) and Quark Xpress. Several years ago QuarkXpress ruled but lately InDesign is taking over. The templates or master pages can be easily applied to a page or group of pages. The downside is that's a new philosophy, apart from Word. The idea is to create several linked textboxes and use good design combinations and techniques. Word is easier. You just have to type text. But the end result tends to become annoying. Anyway, I think Word is still preferable, unless the design has critical importance.
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