THthangalin·Feb 4, 2017
The article describes Markdown[1], basically. In my opinion, content should be written once and transformed to any format[2], including ConTeXt[3], docx, HTML, EPUB, or plain text. But here's a puzzler.
Every software developer defines and uses variables. If variables are so powerful, why do WYSIWYG word processors lack the ability to quickly and easily insert variable definitions?[4] In the screenshot, the left-hand side provides an editable variable definition hierarchy, the middle pane provides a Markdown editor, and the right-hand side provides a real-time HTML preview of the content with variables interpolated and substituted.
After variables, programming language integration--such as R[5]--comes naturally. Consider the following syntax (that could be hidden through a UI):
`r#csv2md('data.csv',totals=TRUE)`
The function imports
Read the rest
data from an external data source and converts it to Markdown. The HTML version can be styled, or piped through pandoc to create beautiful PDF output[6]. In the screenshot, the left-hand side shows the csv2md command (totals are calculated automatically for numeric columns), the middle pane shows an HTML preview (real-time), and the right-hand side shows a PDF produced from the same source document using pandoc and ConTeXt.
The CSV file could also be a JSON request over HTTP, or database query, meaning that the document is always up-to-date with the most recent data: a living document. This could be accomplished without having to change the source document, as well:
`r#import(v$data$source,totals=TRUE)`
Here, v$data$source is a variable that defines a data source. In this case, the value might be 'data.csv', but could be 'protocol://host/app/api/json'. The variables themselves could be sourced from a YAML file, JSON data stream, or remote database.
This is what I've been working towards for the last several months.[7] There's more that this editor can do, but it's still in early beta stages, should anyone care to try it.
[1]: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/168
[2]: http://pandoc.org/
[3]: http://wiki.contextgarden.net/
[4]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar/mast...
[5]: https://github.com/bedatadriven/renjin/
[6]: http://i.imgur.com/Qe6mTpx.png
[7]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar