How I work, Part V : #Zettlr and Academic #Markdown | Hendrik Erz
▻https://www.hendrik-erz.de/post/how-i-work-part-v-zettlr-and-academic-markdown.html
During the late summer of 2017, I played around a little bit with a framework I recently discovered, called Electron. Its idea is simple: Write a web-application, and load that into some binary so that it looks as if you had a native application on your computer. After fiddling around with it for a few days, I figured that I could both load in Pandoc and use it to have a graphical user interface for using it1, and also that I could spin up a code editor that lets me edit Markdown files. I realised that, instead of having to live with a subpar academic writing experience, I could forge my own. And so I began focusing on improving Zettlr more and more so that – in the end – I would have a tool for my academic workflow that “just works.”
What I didn’t realise back then is something John MacFarlane from the Pandoc project recently explained: An Open Source project of yours is first like your little baby: It’s something you made and of which you are proud. But then, a few months into development, it becomes more and more like an actual baby which you have to feed, that keeps you awake at night, and that eats away a lot of your time. But, since it’s your baby, you won’t give up on it. So you push forward.