14 May 2014

#sci-writing: drafting the old fashioned way




This post is related to:
  1. http://erwinirawansblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/bibliography-and-markdown.html
  2. http://erwinirawansblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/toc-in-markdown-doc.html

Why I draft mostly in txt or rtf format: 

  • it's light on my drive space, 
  • notepad is always in everyone's machine n smartphones, 
  • it's virusfree
  • it allows me to move freely across multiple OS (Mac,Win,Linux), 
  • it allows me to move between wordprocessor (even different Word version can give u trouble)
When drafting, I usually put my graphs and tables list at the end of the file. 

After enough drafting, then I polish the format, insert the graphs-tables, and make a second n 3rd draft in LibreOffice or LaTeX.

Or it even goes simpler for R users:

  • Type your draft using R Markdown
  • Then with "knitr" package type on your R prompt:

> library(knitr)
> pandoc('foo.md', format='html')  # to convert from markdown to HTML
> pandoc('foo.md', format='latex') to convert from markdown to LaTeX/PDF        > pandoc('foo.md', format='docx')  to convert from markdown to MS Word          > pandoc('foo.md', format='odt')   to convert from markdown to OpenDocument

:-) {@dasaptaerwin}

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