Lea Verou, PhD

My PhD advisor, @karger: “If you do your thesis in Markdown, HTML, and CSS¹ it will be 10x the work!”
Me: “Yes, but it will entail 1/100th of the procrastination!”

Kids, …we were both right. 🥴

¹ as opposed to LaTeX, which is the gold standard in our field.

Jul 27, 2024 at 4:19amWeb
Show threadLea Verou, PhDJul 27, 2024

Also, I wonder if this may be the first PhD thesis made with @11ty .

@zachleat do you know?

Based on the scarcity of good plugins for citations and cross-references, I wonder if that might be the case.

Hopefully that will change post-defense when I'll have more time to polish & release my code. 😅

Show threadBob MonsourJul 29, 2024
@leaverou @11ty @zachleat There's this post about using 11ty for PhD thesis with a sidebar link to the thesis. https://julsraemy.ch/posts/2024/02/22/phd-website-loud-11ty/
PhD Website: LOUD for Cultural Heritage – now running with 11ty

I have redesigned my PhD Website – Linked Open Usable Data for Cultural Heritage (https://phd.julsraemy.ch) – with 11ty, a static site generator, instead of Omeka S.

Julien A. Raemy
Show threadBob MonsourJul 29, 2024
@leaverou @11ty @zachleat I spoke too soon. Looks like the actual thesis is not yet built. That said, might be someone to connect with.
Show threadZach LeathermanJul 29, 2024

@leaverou amazing!!

I think https://pieterheyvaert.com/phd/dissertation was another one I’ve found

cc @bobmonsour

Pieter Heyvaert

The personal website of Pieter Heyvaert where you can find all his publications and blog posts.

Show threadLea Verou, PhDJul 29, 2024
@zachleat @bobmonsour I could be wrong, but I think this is a separate export of the content, not how the actual thesis (the PDF) was produced.
Show threadZach LeathermanJul 29, 2024
@leaverou @bobmonsour I think you’re right!
Show threadLea Verou, PhDJul 29, 2024
@zachleat @bobmonsour What I'm trying to do is use the 11ty for the actual printed version I will submit to MIT, using Paged.js for page numbers etc.
Show threadcatraxx Jul 29, 2024
@leaverou @zachleat @bobmonsour I love everything about this.
Show threadJulie BlancJul 30, 2024

@leaverou I'm so glad you're using Paged.js! 😀 I also did a web and print version of my PhD thesis with HTML and CSS (from markdown). I just used Pandoc and a big Make file. Bibliographical references are well supported by Pandoc, in BibTex format → https://phd.julie-blanc.fr/

Another example with Paged.js, @antoinentl used Hugo to deploy his thesis → https://these.quaternum.net/

Composer avec les technologies du web

Thèse de doctorat en ergonomie, Université Paris 8, Vincennes – Saint Denis.

Show threadJulie BlancJul 30, 2024
@leaverou In another context, recently a multi-format catalog from the Louvre used a CMS called Flax (@julientaq @polylogue) which is actually based on 11ty and Paged.js. This might interest you → https://www.robotscooking.com/open-source-powering-the-louvres-latest-digital-catalogue/
Open Source Powering the Louvre's Latest Digital Catalogue

The Louvre Museum has utilized Coko's open-source publishing tools to create an innovative multi-format publication for the works of Antoon Van Dyck.

Robots Cooking
Show threadAxel RauschmayerJul 27, 2024
@leaverou Just in case: Pandoc does Markdown and seems to have good support for scientific citations. It supports a variety of target formats, including HTML & LaTeX..
Show threadOndřej ŽáraJul 27, 2024
@rauschma @leaverou +1 for Pandoc. Also, there seems to be a new kid on the block: https://github.com/typst/typst (no experience with that one so far thought).
GitHub - typst/typst: A markup-based typesetting system that is powerful and easy to learn.

A markup-based typesetting system that is powerful and easy to learn. - typst/typst

GitHub
Show threadLea Verou, PhDJul 27, 2024
@ondras @rauschma Damn, typst looks good. I might have gone with it if I had found it a month ago. Though given Pandoc doesn’t support it I would have probably taken just as long converting my existing papers into its format.
Show threadOndřej ŽáraJul 27, 2024
@leaverou @rauschma There seems to be some Pandoc-Typst support: https://pandoc.org/typst-property-output.html
Pandoc - Typst property output

Show threadLea Verou, PhDJul 27, 2024

@ondras @rauschma Actually, after looking into the language a bit, I don’t think it’s for me.

I think once you know CSS any other document styling mechanism just feels extremely frustrating.

And there is so much nice tooling around Markdown.

I actually really like my current workflow, but it took 3 weeks to set up and I’m still discovering bugs to fix...

Show threadLea Verou, PhDJul 27, 2024

@rauschma I used Pandoc to import previous LaTeX from existing papers into Markdown, but it didn’t fit my needs for generating the final output HTML.

But yeah, Pandoc has done so much in this area. It’s due to Pandoc that we even HAVE a Makrdown citation syntax.

Show threadOndřej ŽáraJul 27, 2024
@leaverou @rauschma Pandoc can be heavily enhanced via "filters", custom programs that alter its internal AST document representation. And you can implement them in literally any programming language. I recall writing some custom JS filters back in 2015: https://github.com/ondras/pandoc-filters
GitHub - ondras/pandoc-filters: Various custom filters for Pandoc

Various custom filters for Pandoc. Contribute to ondras/pandoc-filters development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadDjoerd Hiemstra 🍉Jul 27, 2024
@leaverou @karger procrastination well spent!
Show threadZachJul 27, 2024
@leaverou @karger Congrats on your finishing! Sounds infinitely better than fighting MS Word every step of the way. Citations and results tables were particularly fragile. I don’t know how many times I grumbled that it’d be easier to code. And I barely knew how to code back then …