Best approach for generating LaTeX/PDF with given journal template (e.g. Elsevier)?

Best approach for generating LaTeX/PDF with given journal template (e.g. Elsevier)?

[mfhepp]

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Dear all:
I would like to set up a sustainable way of generating journal paper 
submissions for journals that require the usage of a given TeX 
specification, like

- Elsevier: elsarticle Class, see 
https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsarticle
- ACM Journals: see https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/acmart
- Springer 
LNCS: https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

As a key benefit of using Markdown for academic writing and Pandoc-based 
workflows for generating documents is that I do not have to go too deeply 
into LaTeX technicalities, I would like to understand the best way of going 
from a Markdown document with an article to a submission-ready PDF with 
LaTeX sources according to those two (and similar) TeX specifications.

From my understanding, there are several alternative routes:

1. Generate a Pandoc LaTeX template from those packages / specs, i.e. 
basically inserting Pandoc variable placeholders into a template build from 
those packages.

Cons: Lots of work, difficult to keep in sync with changing specs from 
publishers.

2. Use Pandoc to generate an intermediate .tex document using the standard 
Pandoc LaTeX template, applying some custom filters (LUA/Panflute, ...) to 
do necessary substitutions and additions, then using TeX to build the final 
PDF.

Cons: Will also require a deep dive into the differences between the LaTeX 
output from Pandoc and the publisher specs.

3. Use all kinds of Pandoc options and meta-data like `header-includes` 
etc. to use the given LaTeX packages directly.

There are many abandoned, "quick-and-dirty" approaches in Github 
repositories out there, but ideally, we would have a best practice for this 
common case.

What would you recommend?

Thanks!

Best wishes
Martin

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Re: Best approach for generating LaTeX/PDF with given journal template (e.g. Elsevier)?

[Albert Krewinkel]

My personal advice would be to use rticles for this, either with plain R
or with RStudio. It's been written for this exact use case.

Website: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/rticles/
GitHub: https://github.com/rstudio/rticles

You may also be interested in the pandoc-scholar project; but, as you
note, you'd have to spend a lot of time adjusting the publisher's
template to be usable with pandoc. Also, pandoc-scholar is currently a
one-person project, and rticles is better maintained right now.

GitHub: https://github.com/pandoc-scholar/pandoc-scholar

HTH,
Albert


mfhepp <mfhepp-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes:

> Dear all:
> I would like to set up a sustainable way of generating journal paper
> submissions for journals that require the usage of a given TeX
> specification, like
>
> - Elsevier: elsarticle Class, see
> https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsarticle
> - ACM Journals: see https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/acmart
> - Springer
> LNCS: https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
>
> As a key benefit of using Markdown for academic writing and Pandoc-based
> workflows for generating documents is that I do not have to go too deeply
> into LaTeX technicalities, I would like to understand the best way of going
> from a Markdown document with an article to a submission-ready PDF with
> LaTeX sources according to those two (and similar) TeX specifications.
>
> From my understanding, there are several alternative routes:
>
> 1. Generate a Pandoc LaTeX template from those packages / specs, i.e.
> basically inserting Pandoc variable placeholders into a template build from
> those packages.
>
> Cons: Lots of work, difficult to keep in sync with changing specs from
> publishers.
>
> 2. Use Pandoc to generate an intermediate .tex document using the standard
> Pandoc LaTeX template, applying some custom filters (LUA/Panflute, ...) to
> do necessary substitutions and additions, then using TeX to build the final
> PDF.
>
> Cons: Will also require a deep dive into the differences between the LaTeX
> output from Pandoc and the publisher specs.
>
> 3. Use all kinds of Pandoc options and meta-data like `header-includes`
> etc. to use the given LaTeX packages directly.
>
> There are many abandoned, "quick-and-dirty" approaches in Github
> repositories out there, but ideally, we would have a best practice for this
> common case.
>
> What would you recommend?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Best wishes
> Martin


--
Albert Krewinkel
GPG: 8eed e3e2 e8c5 6f18 81fe  e836 388d c0b2 1f63 1124

Re: Best approach for generating LaTeX/PDF with given journal template (e.g. Elsevier)?

[Martin Hepp]

Thanks!

rticles looks very promising!

I will check whether it will be possible to directly use the templates etc. in a pure Pandoc workflow, i.e. without R or RStudio.

Basically it should be possible to reuse the templates and styles from the repository, like

    https://github.com/rstudio/rticles/tree/master/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv

and create a generic make utility as a Bash or Python script.


Best wishes
Martin



> On 5. Nov 2021, at 13:39, Albert Krewinkel <albert+pandoc-9EawChwDxG8hFhg+JK9F0w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> My personal advice would be to use rticles for this, either with plain R
> or with RStudio. It's been written for this exact use case.
> 
> Website: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/rticles/
> GitHub: https://github.com/rstudio/rticles
> 
> You may also be interested in the pandoc-scholar project; but, as you
> note, you'd have to spend a lot of time adjusting the publisher's
> template to be usable with pandoc. Also, pandoc-scholar is currently a
> one-person project, and rticles is better maintained right now.
> 
> GitHub: https://github.com/pandoc-scholar/pandoc-scholar
> 
> HTH,
> Albert
> 
> 
> mfhepp <mfhepp-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes:
> 
>> Dear all:
>> I would like to set up a sustainable way of generating journal paper
>> submissions for journals that require the usage of a given TeX
>> specification, like
>> 
>> - Elsevier: elsarticle Class, see
>> https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsarticle
>> - ACM Journals: see https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/acmart
>> - Springer
>> LNCS: https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
>> 
>> As a key benefit of using Markdown for academic writing and Pandoc-based
>> workflows for generating documents is that I do not have to go too deeply
>> into LaTeX technicalities, I would like to understand the best way of going
>> from a Markdown document with an article to a submission-ready PDF with
>> LaTeX sources according to those two (and similar) TeX specifications.
>> 
>> From my understanding, there are several alternative routes:
>> 
>> 1. Generate a Pandoc LaTeX template from those packages / specs, i.e.
>> basically inserting Pandoc variable placeholders into a template build from
>> those packages.
>> 
>> Cons: Lots of work, difficult to keep in sync with changing specs from
>> publishers.
>> 
>> 2. Use Pandoc to generate an intermediate .tex document using the standard
>> Pandoc LaTeX template, applying some custom filters (LUA/Panflute, ...) to
>> do necessary substitutions and additions, then using TeX to build the final
>> PDF.
>> 
>> Cons: Will also require a deep dive into the differences between the LaTeX
>> output from Pandoc and the publisher specs.
>> 
>> 3. Use all kinds of Pandoc options and meta-data like `header-includes`
>> etc. to use the given LaTeX packages directly.
>> 
>> There are many abandoned, "quick-and-dirty" approaches in Github
>> repositories out there, but ideally, we would have a best practice for this
>> common case.
>> 
>> What would you recommend?
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> 
>> Best wishes
>> Martin
> 
> 
> --
> Albert Krewinkel
> GPG: 8eed e3e2 e8c5 6f18 81fe  e836 388d c0b2 1f63 1124
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pandoc-discuss" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pandoc-discuss+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pandoc-discuss/877ddm7p49.fsf%40zeitkraut.de.

Re: Best approach for generating LaTeX/PDF with given journal template (e.g. Elsevier)?

[mfhepp]

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As I have been asked privately on the progress of this:

Yes, *it is relatively straightforward to use the rTicles templates with 
plain Pandoc.*

Basically, you need to do the following:

   1. Make sure that Pandoc uses the template from rTicles. They are in

... /rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/<format>/resources/template.tex

Example:

... /rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/elsevier/resources/template.tex

   1. Make sure Pandoc uses the proper .csl style file, either also from 
   rTicles, or IMO better, directly from Zotero.

Example:

csl: 
https://www.zotero.org/styles/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer-science

   1. Make sure that LaTeX finds the TeX files needed for the template. The 
   best way is IMO setting the TEXINPUTS environment variable accordingly.

The are typically in the skeleton directory of the format, e.g.

... /rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/skeleton/

So before running Pandoc, use

export TEXINPUTS= 
<your_full_path>/rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/skeleton/:

The colon at the end (:) is important, because it makes sure that the 
standard path for TeX remains available.

I would

   - put all that into a default.yaml file,
   - export the rTicles path as an environment variable RTICLES_PATH,
   - and invoke Pandoc from a bash script.

# defaults.yaml
from: markdown
template: 
${RTICLES_PATH}/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/resources/template.tex
csl: 
https://www.zotero.org/styles/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer-science
standalone: true

Then, you can convert your file.md with a bash file like so:

# make.sh
export RTICLES_PATH=<your_full_path_for_rticles>
export TEXINPUTS= 
$RTICLES_PATH/rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/skeleton/:
pandoc $1 -o "$1.pdf" --defaults=defaults.yaml

Make this executable:

chmod +x make.sh

Then, you can generate a PDF from Markdown like so

./make.sh myfile.md

That should do the trick. In some cases, you will have to make sure that 
the YAML meta-data in your document matches what the template expects. Or 
you need to write a LUA filter that converts the meta-data accordingly.

Hope that helps!

*Disclaimer:* I did not post my actual commands and files in here, so there 
might be minor syntactical problems, but I hope you get the idea.

Best wishes

Martin






On Friday, November 5, 2021 at 2:56:07 PM UTC+1 mfhepp wrote:

> Thanks!
>
> rticles looks very promising!
>
> I will check whether it will be possible to directly use the templates 
> etc. in a pure Pandoc workflow, i.e. without R or RStudio.
>
> Basically it should be possible to reuse the templates and styles from the 
> repository, like
>
>
> https://github.com/rstudio/rticles/tree/master/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv
>
> and create a generic make utility as a Bash or Python script.
>
>
> Best wishes
> Martin
>
>
>
> > On 5. Nov 2021, at 13:39, Albert Krewinkel <albert...-9EawChwDxG8hFhg+JK9F0w@public.gmane.org> 
> wrote:
> > 
> > My personal advice would be to use rticles for this, either with plain R
> > or with RStudio. It's been written for this exact use case.
> > 
> > Website: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/rticles/
> > GitHub: https://github.com/rstudio/rticles
> > 
> > You may also be interested in the pandoc-scholar project; but, as you
> > note, you'd have to spend a lot of time adjusting the publisher's
> > template to be usable with pandoc. Also, pandoc-scholar is currently a
> > one-person project, and rticles is better maintained right now.
> > 
> > GitHub: https://github.com/pandoc-scholar/pandoc-scholar
> > 
> > HTH,
> > Albert
> > 
> > 
> > mfhepp <mfh...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes:
> > 
> >> Dear all:
> >> I would like to set up a sustainable way of generating journal paper
> >> submissions for journals that require the usage of a given TeX
> >> specification, like
> >> 
> >> - Elsevier: elsarticle Class, see
> >> https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsarticle
> >> - ACM Journals: see 
> https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/acmart
> >> - Springer
> >> LNCS: 
> https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
> >> 
> >> As a key benefit of using Markdown for academic writing and Pandoc-based
> >> workflows for generating documents is that I do not have to go too 
> deeply
> >> into LaTeX technicalities, I would like to understand the best way of 
> going
> >> from a Markdown document with an article to a submission-ready PDF with
> >> LaTeX sources according to those two (and similar) TeX specifications.
> >> 
> >> From my understanding, there are several alternative routes:
> >> 
> >> 1. Generate a Pandoc LaTeX template from those packages / specs, i.e.
> >> basically inserting Pandoc variable placeholders into a template build 
> from
> >> those packages.
> >> 
> >> Cons: Lots of work, difficult to keep in sync with changing specs from
> >> publishers.
> >> 
> >> 2. Use Pandoc to generate an intermediate .tex document using the 
> standard
> >> Pandoc LaTeX template, applying some custom filters (LUA/Panflute, ...) 
> to
> >> do necessary substitutions and additions, then using TeX to build the 
> final
> >> PDF.
> >> 
> >> Cons: Will also require a deep dive into the differences between the 
> LaTeX
> >> output from Pandoc and the publisher specs.
> >> 
> >> 3. Use all kinds of Pandoc options and meta-data like `header-includes`
> >> etc. to use the given LaTeX packages directly.
> >> 
> >> There are many abandoned, "quick-and-dirty" approaches in Github
> >> repositories out there, but ideally, we would have a best practice for 
> this
> >> common case.
> >> 
> >> What would you recommend?
> >> 
> >> Thanks!
> >> 
> >> Best wishes
> >> Martin
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > Albert Krewinkel
> > GPG: 8eed e3e2 e8c5 6f18 81fe e836 388d c0b2 1f63 1124
> > 
> > -- 
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
> Groups "pandoc-discuss" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
> an email to pandoc-discus...-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org
> > To view this discussion on the web visit 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pandoc-discuss/877ddm7p49.fsf%40zeitkraut.de
> .
>
>

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Re: Best approach for generating LaTeX/PDF with given journal template (e.g. Elsevier)?

[mfhepp]

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One more thing in case that is not clear: In order to install rTicles on 
your machine, you can simply use either

git clone https://github.com/rstudio/rticles.git

or download the ZIP file from

https://github.com/rstudio/rticles/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 4:01:42 PM UTC+2 mfhepp wrote:

> As I have been asked privately on the progress of this:
>
> Yes, *it is relatively straightforward to use the rTicles templates with 
> plain Pandoc.*
>
> Basically, you need to do the following:
>
>    1. Make sure that Pandoc uses the template from rTicles. They are in
>
> ... /rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/<format>/resources/template.tex
>
> Example:
>
> ... /rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/elsevier/resources/template.tex
>
>    1. Make sure Pandoc uses the proper .csl style file, either also from 
>    rTicles, or IMO better, directly from Zotero.
>
> Example:
>
> csl: 
> https://www.zotero.org/styles/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer-science
>
>    1. Make sure that LaTeX finds the TeX files needed for the template. 
>    The best way is IMO setting the TEXINPUTS environment variable accordingly.
>
> The are typically in the skeleton directory of the format, e.g.
>
> ... /rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/skeleton/
>
> So before running Pandoc, use
>
> export TEXINPUTS= 
> <your_full_path>/rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/skeleton/:
>
> The colon at the end (:) is important, because it makes sure that the 
> standard path for TeX remains available.
>
> I would
>
>    - put all that into a default.yaml file,
>    - export the rTicles path as an environment variable RTICLES_PATH,
>    - and invoke Pandoc from a bash script.
>
> # defaults.yaml
> from: markdown
> template: 
> ${RTICLES_PATH}/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/resources/template.tex
> csl: 
> https://www.zotero.org/styles/springer-lecture-notes-in-computer-science
> standalone: true
>
> Then, you can convert your file.md with a bash file like so:
>
> # make.sh
> export RTICLES_PATH=<your_full_path_for_rticles>
> export TEXINPUTS= 
> $RTICLES_PATH/rticles/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv/skeleton/:
> pandoc $1 -o "$1.pdf" --defaults=defaults.yaml
>
> Make this executable:
>
> chmod +x make.sh
>
> Then, you can generate a PDF from Markdown like so
>
> ./make.sh myfile.md
>
> That should do the trick. In some cases, you will have to make sure that 
> the YAML meta-data in your document matches what the template expects. Or 
> you need to write a LUA filter that converts the meta-data accordingly.
>
> Hope that helps!
>
> *Disclaimer:* I did not post my actual commands and files in here, so 
> there might be minor syntactical problems, but I hope you get the idea.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, November 5, 2021 at 2:56:07 PM UTC+1 mfhepp wrote:
>
>> Thanks! 
>>
>> rticles looks very promising! 
>>
>> I will check whether it will be possible to directly use the templates 
>> etc. in a pure Pandoc workflow, i.e. without R or RStudio. 
>>
>> Basically it should be possible to reuse the templates and styles from 
>> the repository, like 
>>
>>
>> https://github.com/rstudio/rticles/tree/master/inst/rmarkdown/templates/arxiv 
>>
>> and create a generic make utility as a Bash or Python script. 
>>
>>
>> Best wishes 
>> Martin 
>>
>>
>>
>> > On 5. Nov 2021, at 13:39, Albert Krewinkel <albert...-9EawChwDxG8hFhg+JK9F0w@public.gmane.org> 
>> wrote: 
>> > 
>> > My personal advice would be to use rticles for this, either with plain 
>> R 
>> > or with RStudio. It's been written for this exact use case. 
>> > 
>> > Website: https://pkgs.rstudio.com/rticles/ 
>> > GitHub: https://github.com/rstudio/rticles 
>> > 
>> > You may also be interested in the pandoc-scholar project; but, as you 
>> > note, you'd have to spend a lot of time adjusting the publisher's 
>> > template to be usable with pandoc. Also, pandoc-scholar is currently a 
>> > one-person project, and rticles is better maintained right now. 
>> > 
>> > GitHub: https://github.com/pandoc-scholar/pandoc-scholar 
>> > 
>> > HTH, 
>> > Albert 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > mfhepp <mfh...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes: 
>> > 
>> >> Dear all: 
>> >> I would like to set up a sustainable way of generating journal paper 
>> >> submissions for journals that require the usage of a given TeX 
>> >> specification, like 
>> >> 
>> >> - Elsevier: elsarticle Class, see 
>> >> https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsarticle 
>> >> - ACM Journals: see 
>> https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/acmart 
>> >> - Springer 
>> >> LNCS: 
>> https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines 
>> >> 
>> >> As a key benefit of using Markdown for academic writing and 
>> Pandoc-based 
>> >> workflows for generating documents is that I do not have to go too 
>> deeply 
>> >> into LaTeX technicalities, I would like to understand the best way of 
>> going 
>> >> from a Markdown document with an article to a submission-ready PDF 
>> with 
>> >> LaTeX sources according to those two (and similar) TeX specifications. 
>> >> 
>> >> From my understanding, there are several alternative routes: 
>> >> 
>> >> 1. Generate a Pandoc LaTeX template from those packages / specs, i.e. 
>> >> basically inserting Pandoc variable placeholders into a template build 
>> from 
>> >> those packages. 
>> >> 
>> >> Cons: Lots of work, difficult to keep in sync with changing specs from 
>> >> publishers. 
>> >> 
>> >> 2. Use Pandoc to generate an intermediate .tex document using the 
>> standard 
>> >> Pandoc LaTeX template, applying some custom filters (LUA/Panflute, 
>> ...) to 
>> >> do necessary substitutions and additions, then using TeX to build the 
>> final 
>> >> PDF. 
>> >> 
>> >> Cons: Will also require a deep dive into the differences between the 
>> LaTeX 
>> >> output from Pandoc and the publisher specs. 
>> >> 
>> >> 3. Use all kinds of Pandoc options and meta-data like 
>> `header-includes` 
>> >> etc. to use the given LaTeX packages directly. 
>> >> 
>> >> There are many abandoned, "quick-and-dirty" approaches in Github 
>> >> repositories out there, but ideally, we would have a best practice for 
>> this 
>> >> common case. 
>> >> 
>> >> What would you recommend? 
>> >> 
>> >> Thanks! 
>> >> 
>> >> Best wishes 
>> >> Martin 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > -- 
>> > Albert Krewinkel 
>> > GPG: 8eed e3e2 e8c5 6f18 81fe e836 388d c0b2 1f63 1124 
>> > 
>> > -- 
>> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
>> Groups "pandoc-discuss" group. 
>> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
>> an email to pandoc-discus...-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org 
>> > To view this discussion on the web visit 
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pandoc-discuss/877ddm7p49.fsf%40zeitkraut.de. 
>>
>>
>>

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