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Comment by rodgerd | Hacker News Reader

I find it hilarious that the author throws shade at Word for having complex interpolation at https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/07/06/typesetting-markdow... but then has to veer into which of the multiple different standards and runtimes can be used with Markdown to achieve the same outcome.

Like, it's a good overview of how to achieve these things with Markdown, but maybe let's not hang our hats on "simpler" here, huh?

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I wrote an editor (based on the aforementioned architecture diagram) that makes the integration of interpolated variables much simpler than what the blog describes:

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar/

Here's the money shot:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar/mast...

Variables are visible on the leftmost panel. You can insert a variable by typing in any partial value followed by pressing Ctrl+Space (two steps instead of over a dozen). The editor inserts the variable name and the preview panel updates accordingly.

That definitely isn't clear from the blog post, though.

Aside, can Word perform string interpolation on variables?

I've used a mishmash of Liquid/Jekyll and Pandoc to achieve this in the past - but this approach looks nice, thanks for sharing.

I feel this is not only about markdown vs Word, but a way to show that the problem exists and that you can solve it by using the Unix approach. So it's simple in the sense used in Toki Pona: "good or fixable".

Give me asciidoctor any day. Markdown just isn't expressive enough to work without relying on a janky network of external tools.

Does asciidoctor support tikz diagrams?

Yes, when using Asciidoctor at least.

https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-diagram/issues/18...

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