Alternative to LaTeX?

[Henk Koster]

On Thu, 11 May 2006 21:07:54 +0100, Sean Hammond wrote:

> I've been writing a document using markdown and have just gotten to
> the point where all the citations and cross-referencing are such that
> I've had to bite the bullet and convert it to LaTeX.
> 
> LaTeX is such an ugly program. I don't like using it. The syntax is
> ugly and the command line interface is ugly. But nothing else seems to
> provide the power that LaTeX does with respect to:
> 
> * Automating citations and Bibtex
> * Automating cross-referencing
> * Automatic chapter and section numbers, tables of contents and title
> pages, etc.
> 
> I'd really like a program with the niceness and simplicity of
> something like markdown (which is really nice to work with in GEdit
> with syntax highlighting) and the power of LaTeX in those key areas.
> 
> Plain text as the source file is fairly essential, and it'd be good to
> be able to export to HTML and PDF. Another problem with LaTeX is that
> there's no good way to get it into HTML, although pdflatex is good for
> PDF.
> 
> Also I like a bit of colour. All the LaTeX classes I can find are
> black and white. I hate that!
> 
> Any recommendations?

But of course! He wants troff/groff...