Comment by brudgers

Comment by brudgers 3 days ago

5 replies

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Curious why that matters to you?

I mean everything has dependencies (some of the solutions elsewhere require Chrome and other common solutions require the JVM). At least Pandoc is GPL.

kakokiyrvoooo 2 days ago

It matters because pandoc is not rendering the website to pdf, it converts the html to latex and then uses a latex engine to render the pdf.

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  • brudgers 2 days ago

    Forgive me but I don’t understand why that matters to you and am trying to understand what the issue with Latex is.

    Because lots of things work this way. For example compilers built on LLV uses an intermediate language and Python uses byte code.

    I suspect some html to pdf tools go through postScript.

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kreetx 2 days ago

There are multiple ways to "depend", so if pandoc executes some external tool all of the work then might as well use that external tool directly. You will get more control over how the conversion happens, know for what search for when in trouble etc.

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  • brudgers 2 days ago

    My understanding and experience is that Latex has a significant learning curve and Pandoc provides a more gentle front end.

    Of course Latex gives you fine control to hand tune the engine…but that doesn’t seem like what the OP is looking for.

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    • kreetx 5 hours ago

      Sure, I don't mean that anyone would look at the Latex in between. I'm just saying that if tool x directly calls tool y to do the job then might as well use tool y directly.

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