Looking for app to design a book

Question

Hello
I will try to design a book on arch, and I'm looking for the right software.
I've tried Libreoffice (a bit messy for the task) and Scribus (master page handling lacks some flexibility) for the moment.
I know this is a bit off-topic, but I would be very interested by your feedback.

Answer 1

LaTeX can't be beat when it comes to layout/typesetting. However, I do all my actual writing using Pandoc's extended Markdown syntax. I can think of three reasons to prefer Pandoc, at least for the writing process:
- LaTeX makes gorgeous final products but it's syntax is tedious to work with compared to Markdown, even the more complex Markdown used by Pandoc. Block quotes, lists, citations, headings, footnotes and bibliographies are all much easier to work with in Pandoc since you don't have to switch between writing prose and writing code---you just place simple punctuation marks in the appropriate place to get the desired effect.
- Pandoc can output to damn near every format imaginable (including different TeX derivatives), so you can use LaTeX just for formatting the final product rather than writing the whole document.
- In contrast, LaTeX can only output three formats on its own: PDF, Docbook and (unless I'm mistaken) ODF. You'd need an extra tool---like, say, Pandoc----to convert your LaTeX document to HTML or EPUB or MediaWiki or something if you wanted to publish in a medium other than print (or one that mimics print as PDF does).
- Another possibly less-compelling reason would be that Markdown is deliberately designed with the intent of making an unprocessed document human-readable. Most people should be able to open or print out a plain text document marked up with Markdown and generally understand what the markup signifies. This makes collaborative editing with people unfamiliar with Markdown possible.