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Kitābaŧ wRoutine 1.0

A simple markdown-based workflow for sustainable academic writing with some features for the field of Arabic and Islamic Studies (transliteration, AH date conversion, Arabic support). To test, if everything necessary is installed on you machine (see, Requirements below), run python wRoutine.py from Terminal on Mac (or command line on Windows). If everything is installed, a PDF file should be generated and open. To start your own project, simply replace *.md files in the draft folder with your own, and change the _settings.yml accordingly (see below).

NB: The content below needs to be reorganized for readability; at the moment it is a bunch of useful, but scattered notes.

Atom Features

  • [Atom] a nice and simple, yet sufficiently robust interface (https://atom.io/) seem to fit nicely;
  • [wRoutine] atomized drafting: easy inclusion/exclusion of sections into/from the master draft;
    • draft can be atomized into sections and subsections, all stored as separate files;
    • all sections of the main piece must be stored in the draft folder; if you work on a book project, you can also create subfolders for each chapter;
    • the filenames must begin with 0 (zero) and end with .md; change file names to change their order in folders and subfolders. The initial 0 can be changed into some other character (or, better, prepended with z) in order to be excluded from the final draft;
    • all files that begin with 0 and end with .md will be joined—in alphabetical order—into the master draft in the main folder of the project; subfolders for chapters should also start with numbers, which helps to arrange all folders into the desired order. The names of subfolders and files can be changed in order to achieve the desired order of sections within the final document. For example, 000 Introduction.md will be always before 010 Subject of the Study.md; prefix z can be added to exclude a file from the final draft (z will also push an excluded section to the bottom of the list in Atom (and any file browser)).
  • [markdown] explicit logical markup with markdown, a simple text encoding scheme;
    • see the following two tutorials on the basic principles of markdown and sustainable academic writing;
    • standard and expanded pandoc markdown is used for the following (see Pandoc User’s Guide for specific details):
      • images and illustrations with captions;
      • cross-references to sections, images, tables within the text;
      • footnotes;
  • [Atom + Zotero-citations] automatic citation insertion form bibliography files (see, bibliography configuration)
  • [bibTeX; Pandoc] bibliography and citation styles (Pandoc);
  • [Pandoc; XeLaTeX] automatic generation of desired formats (e.g., PDF, HTML, DOCX, etc.); PDF requires [Xe]LaTeX engine to be installed on the machine; at the moment, only PDF conversion is fully implemented.

Atom packages:

Component installation notes

Pandoc

  • https://pandoc.org/installing.html
    • On Mac: best with brew install pandoc
    • NB: Anaconda is likely to mess up Pandoc installation; Anaconda may have to be disabled in ~/.bash_profile (Mac)
    • some Pandoc filters might need an update: some are updated with brew (like brew install pandoc-crossref), others are with pip (or pip3), like pip3 install --upgrade pandoc-fignos.
    • for cross-references to sections, images, tables within the text; you will need pandoc-crossref for crossreferences: https://github.com/lierdakil/pandoc-crossref; easiest on Mac: brew install pandoc-crossref);
    • brew install pandoc-citeproc to install pandoc's citation processor.

LaTeX Installation (XeLaTeX)

  • https://miktex.org/download --- perhaps good for Windows; on Mac everything goes sideways... perhaps better to avoid this altogether.
  • LaTeX for Mac: brew install librsvg python homebrew/cask/basictex (from Pandoc page); after that a bunch of packages has to be installed manually (annoying, but doable and needs to be done only once; tlmgr install PACKAGE); alternatively, one can install MacTeX (this one is quite large, about 4Gb)

Amiri Font

_settings.yml File

Below is the contents of the _settings.yml file, which include all the necessary metadata and settings.

Settings.yml

MAIN SETTING

These are the standard YAML parameters from Pandoc markdown; they will be collected and inserted into the main draft (together with other parameters from GENERAL and ADVANCED settings). title and author must be included; abstract and date are optional.

  • title: required (?)
  • author: required (?)
  • abstract: optional
  • date: optional

IMPORTANT

  • path_to_pandoc: path to pandoc on your machine (something like /usr/local/bin/pandoc)

GENERAL SETTINGS

  • draft_folder: path to the atomized draft (required)
  • draft_in: name for the main draft, in markdown format (required)
  • draft_out: name for the output file, currently in PDF only (required)
  • bibliography_master: path to the master bibliography (required);
  • bibliography: path to the bibliography of the project, which is generated automatically from master bibliography, and includes only items that are actually used in the project; makes it faster to generate PDF (required)
  • csl: path to the stylesheet for typesetting references and bibliography (required)
  • latex_template: path to the LaTeX template (required); there are two now, but other templates can be added and used.

NB: Templates: there are two now and they work with different settings.

  • for documentclass: book, there should be no abstract

  • documentclass: book will work with both templates

  • documentclass: article will work only with t_default.latex

  • t_brill.latex works only with documentclass: book or documentclass: report

    • t.brill_endnotes.latex converts all footnotes into endnotes. Endnotes can be typeset at the end of each chapter with \theendnotes, which should simply be added at the end of each chapter; otherwise, all notes will be moved to the very end of the typeset document.

ADVANCED SETTINGS

  • papersize: optional
  • indent: optional
  • fontsize: optional
  • documentclass: required (report, book, article, etc.—See LaTeX classes)
  • toc: optional
  • header-includes: this one to define fonts, mostly (simply change the names of the fonts).

EXTRA SETTINGS: PROGRESS REPORT

  • start_date: 2019/01/01
  • end_date: 2019/01/15
  • draft_length: 14000

You can define your progress parameters in the settings file. Say, you want to write a draft of 14,000 words in two weeks, which would means that you need to write about 1,000 words per day during 2 weeks. You can set a starting date (start_date) and the ending date (end_date), as well as define the length of your draft (draft_length). An example is given above. Please, note that the date format should be followed (YYYY/MM/DD). When you run the script, you will see a progress report (see below). Most of the content of the report should be clear; at the bottom there is a table of detailed progress, which shows 1) date; 2) total length on that date; 3) number of words written between that day and a day in the previous record. Rerunning the script updates today's record. The table with day-by-day progress is saved into a CSV file.

============================
=== Progress report
============================
132 days left till the set deadline (2019-05-31 00:00:00).
10 percent of target draft (90000) is complete.
NB: This count does not include automatically generated content, like references, bibliography, etc.
Current pace: 613 words per day (should not fall below: 687 to meet the deadline)
============================
2019/01/19	9015	9
2019/01/18	9006	9006
============================

Features: For Arabic and Islamic Studies

They include the following:

  • transliteration support, i.e. an easy insertion of tricky characters that are used for transliteration of Arabic (Atom).
  • conversion of AH years into AH/CE format, which is usually used in publications (Atom + script conversion).
  • support of Arabic: 1) Arabic words and phrases in the text; 2) Arabic blockquotes (kept outside of the main text)

The first two features are implemented with Atom snippets, and require a few simple steps to be activated. Morphology of snippets is explained below.

Arabic support

NB: In the default settings, Amiri font is required to render Arabic. You can either install it (https://www.amirifont.org/), or change the name of the Arabic font in _settings.yml

  • Inline arabic word or phrase must be inserted into \textarab{PHRASE}, where PHRASE is an Arabic word or phrase. (NB: use \textarab[voc]{PHRASE}, if the arabic text has ḥarakāt and you want to preserve them).

For example, the line:

which can be used in a variety of distant reading modes of analysis. In the
example above—in the bio-bibliographical record of al-Harawī (\textarabic{الهروي})—we
have all three of them: 1) dates—in our case, the year of death, 163/780

will be renreded as:

In-line Arabic Text

  • Blockquotes are stored as separate text files in the subfolder blockquotes and added into a text as follows (on a separate line and with empty lines before and after; > formats the text as a blockquote):
> ARABIC:filename.txt

For instance, the following:

an entity in words. When the tag is properly entered in front of the necessary
word or the word group (up to 3 words), it is dynamically highlighted.
Automatically inserted tags are highlighted in black.

> [**NB:** Below is just an example of how Arabic can be added into the text as a blockquote.]

> ARABIC:harawi.txt

will be rendered as:

Arabic blockquote

Snippets for Atom: Transliteration and AH Date Conversion

snippets.csv contains a table of variables to be converted into transliteration snippets for Atom. You can edit this file and add more relevant snippets.

You can run generate_snippets.py to regenerate snippets from snippets.csv. Snippets will be saved into paste_to_snippets.cson.txt, in the format that Atom requires.

This script (generate_snippets.py) also generates AH > CE conversion data (for years only).

Adding snippets to Atom

  1. Open paste_to_snippets.cson.txt, select everything and copy into buffer (Ctrl+c).
  2. In Atom, open Atom > Snippets... (this will open snippets.scon)
  3. At the end of the file, paste (Ctrl+v) what you copied from paste_to_snippets.cson.txt
  4. Snippets should start working immediately. (NB: Nope, something needs to be activated...)

Current configuration

Transliteration

  1. Type code, then Tab key to insert the desired character. NB: there is a bit on an issue with the Tab key when you are trying to do that in a list, where Tab adds indentation, rather than does conversion.
  2. Codes are organized as follows:
    1. All codes start with , — a comma
    2. The second character should be:
      1. *, ., or 8 for characters with dots (ḥ, ṭ, ḍ, ġ, etc.)
      2. _, or - for characters with macrons and breves (ā, ḫ, ḏ, ṯ, etc.)
      3. ^ for characters with ^ (š, ǧ, etc.)
    3. The third character is the desired letter (capitalized, if necessary).
    4. After that, press Tab to complete conversion.
  3. NB: There are some additional characters:
    1. ,< or ,' for ʾ, hamzaŧ
    2. ,> or ,` for ʿayn
    3. ,=t for tāʾ marbūṭaŧ
    4. ,~a or ,`a for ã, dagger alif
    5. ,/a for á, alif maḳṣūraŧ
    6. EXAMPLE: ,_a will change into ā

Hiǧrī years

NB: The resultant CE year is the one in which the AH year began.

  1. Works for the range from 1 till 1500;
  2. Type ,;
  3. Type the desired year;
  4. Add AH (no spaces between the year and AH);
  5. Hit TAB;
  6. EXAMPLE: ,748AH will convert into 748/1347 CE.

NB: Hiǧrī years can also be converted with wRoutine.py script. If you code your dates (this works for years and periods) in a certain manner, specific formats can be generated:

code conversion result
@510–597AH 510–597 AH / 1116–1200 CE
@510–597TOCE 1116–1200 CE
@597CE 597/1200 CE
@597TOCE 1200 CE

Requirements

The following software must be installed for the wRoutine to work as intended.

  • Atom (https://atom.io/), a free, hackable text editor. wRoutine is written with this text editor in mind, but it can be used with other editors as well (although some features will not be available). The overall configuration is describe below.
  • Pandoc (https://pandoc.org/) does all the conversion into different formats;
  • LaTeX is used by Pandoc to generate PDF files; (MiKTeX, https://miktex.org/, is the easiest way to install and manage LaTeX on any machine; NB: On my new machine I had some issues with MiKTeX—some components failed to work with pandoc [and probably more specifically—my settings; all the issues were solved when I installed LaTeX with MacTeX http://www.tug.org/mactex/mactex-download.html]; I think MacTeX requires more space on HDD than MiKTeX).

Illustrations and Images

Store illustrations in the images folder (use subfolders for chapters, if working on a book project). An image can be inserted then with:

![Caption for your image](./images/name_of_the_image_file.jpg)

Atom Packages & Options

(NB: Adapted from (NB: adapted from http://u.arizona.edu/~selisker/post/workflow/))

  • document-outline: If you work with single long .md files with a lot of headers and subheaders, the “document-outline” package offers an outline of a document, which is a terrific way to navigate a longer single document by its sections.
  • Zotero-citations: If you don’t want to remember your bibliography keys for citation, there are Zotero-citations (by the author of Better BibTeX for Zotero), autocomplete-bibtex, and Zotero-picker, each of which uses a different approach to streamlining the lookup process.
  • Bibliography file can be selected
  • Themes: UITheme: One Light; Syntax Theme: Base16 Tomorrow Light (or their Dark varieties)
  • insert-timestamp is a nice option for generating foonote numbers: with a timestamp there will not be any collisions. Python timestamp (crtl+alt+shift+U) would work fine for this. Example of a timestamp: 1529359692

Zotero and Better BibTex for Zotero

(NB: adapted from http://u.arizona.edu/~selisker/post/workflow/)

You can use any citation manager that lets you export to .bib files, but I like Zotero with Better BibTeX for Zotero extension. The default key is simplified to be [auth:capitalize][shorttitle1_1][year] (in the Better BibTeX Preferences tab, which renders something like: AllsenCommodity1997), and it automatically adds letters to the end of the keys of the fiercely productive or very commonly surnamed.

After adding Better BibTeX for Zotero plugin there will be a new column Citekey. These are automatically generated using a pattern (say, [auth:capitalize][shorttitle1_1][year]). For Arabic books you might want to fix automatically generated citekeys: each key can also be updated manually: Right click > Better BibTeX > Pin BibTeX key. After that the citation key will be pinned to the field Extra in a selected bibliographical record (e.g., Citation Key: BonnerJihad2006). Changing the citation key in this field will update it in the Citekey columns.

Better BibTeX for Zotero also includes an option for automatic export. For this to work with the wRoutine, export a new library into the wRoutine/bib/ folder as zotero_auto_export.bib (the script will be looking for this filename!). In order to do so: File > Export Library > [Choose Better BibLaTeX and select Keep updated from Translator Options] > save as zotero_auto_export.bib into the wRoutine/bib/ folder (Format: Better BibLaTeX).

The zotero_auto_export.bib file will stay updated in the writing project folder, and Zotero’s library also syncs via the cloud. (Zotero’s extension for Chrome is also the best at grabbing correct and complete bibliography entries from publisher webpages, journal pages, library search pages, and elsewhere.)

One can cite a reference in a text with the author name, year, and page number in the markdown format, like this: [@Goffman1959, 112]. I usually open Zotero or know my author and year, but there are also auto-lookup packages for Atom, listed at the bottom of the post.

Citations are best picked with Zotero-citations plugin for Atom (https://atom.io/packages/zotero-citations), which can be installed like other packages. For Mac: Toggle the Command Palette (command-shift-P, or select it in Packages menu), and scroll down to select 'Zotero Citations: Pick'. After that control-option-p brings up the Zotero look-up window (like in MS Word), from where a citation can be selected, and a markdown citation will be inserted. NB: Zotero must be running and the Better BibTeX for Zotero plugin must installed.

NB: Capitalization Words in Arabic titles get annoyingly capitalized. The simple and easiest solution: make sure that the language of the publication is set to Arabic (select a record > Info tab > Language). After that capitalization will remain exactly the way it is in Zotero.

Issue with Zotero-citations plugin

  • [August 5, 2019] For some reason, it stopped working --- it cannot connect to Zotero; it thinks that it is not open, while it is.
  • Alternative solution is autocomplete-bibtex package: not as nice, but does the trick --- this one connects to the BibTeX file.

To Generate the Final Text

Simpy run the wRoutine.py script (for example, inTerminal, from the project’s folder run: python3 wRoutine.py). On Windows you may need to give the full path to python (version 3.x). This script will collect all pieces into the main draft and then will generate a PDF-file.

Comments

Long comments (several paragraphs/large section):

<!--
HTML-style comments work
- these are convenient for commenting out a large section
- or, for drafting sections/paragraphs
-->

One line/paragraph comment:

[//]: # This format also works as a comment

Issues:

Final Formats

At the moment only conversion to PDF is implemented; settings for other formats will be added soon, inšallãh. Feel free to fork and add those yourself!

Issue with typesetting bibliography

Currently the following hack is implemented (pandoc does not seem to generate bibliography correctly --- each item looks like a regular paragraph)

From here https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/57637/hanging-indents-in-bibliography

The answer provided by @jon just gives me an error message.

But I found the following workaround to be working nicely. If your bibliography should appear at the end of the document (the default), just add the following lines at the very end of the Markdown document:

\noindent
\vspace{-2em}
\setlength{\parindent}{-0.5in}
\setlength{\leftskip}{0.5in}
\setlength{\parskip}{15pt}

However, if you're manually defining the position of the bibliography (using the tag <div id="refs"></div>), you have to wrap the above lines and the <div> tag in a Latex group to limit the formatting changes to the bibliography only:

\begingroup
\noindent
\vspace{-2em}
\setlength{\parindent}{-0.5in}
\setlength{\leftskip}{0.5in}
\setlength{\parskip}{15pt}

<div id="refs"></div>

\endgroup

Explanation of the commands:

  • \setlength{\parindent} and \setlength{\leftskip} define the hanging indentation of the bibiography entries.
  • \setlength{\parskip} defines the spacing between bibliography entries.
  • \noindent is needed in order to also have the very first bibliography entry correctly hanging indented.
  • \vspace{-2em} reduces the vertical spacing between the bibliography and the last paragraph before it (because \noindent adds a blank paragraph).

source: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/pandoc-discuss/4SKA5E11rO4/fDGiNSOsIMkJ

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1. `Imagemagick`
	1. convert img1 img2 -append img12
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