I'm working on a new book lately, and I've been trying to settle on the right workflow. I've been posting the chapters as blog entries, as I complete them, but editing in WordPress leaves a lot to be desired, and I don't really think HTML is the right authoritative source for a book. I wrote my first book, and a lot of old documentation in SGML DocBook, and then later converted it to XML DocBook...it had many benefits, and with a decent vim setup wasn't too hard to work with, and the output options were super flexible. Final format for publication was a Word doc with extensive templates provided by the publisher.

All of that was a long time ago, though, and there's a lot more flexibility in where a document can start and end up in various other formats. pandoc changes the rules entirely, and markdown seems the most "native" format for pandoc.

In short, I think I need to be working in Markdown. But, this doesn't look like the right tool for me, at all. A subscription service for a text editor just feels wonky. I don't really want anyone else in the workflow until I send it off to an editor or for print publication. And, the idea of paying for a text editor, especially one as limited as this one seems to be (though it has some neat tricks), when there are such good/flexible/powerful/free/open editors, seems bizarre.

I think I just need to find a good set of vim settings for markdown, or give Atom another try.