I work on Windows, so I prepared two batchfiles that I can execute. They only include the basic command to use Quarto to render the markdown files into a PDF. One of them includes a second line to keep the command window open in case there is an error.
I try to use free open-source software (FOSS) wherever I can, especially on projects that are intended to be replicable. The following is the list of software I used for creating this Master Thesis document.
- For reference management, I use JabRef. Because I do not like having to export a bib file every time (the saved library is the bib file). And I can include that file in my thesis without doing anything else.
- To create the final PDF from the given Markdown files, I used quarto, an "open-source scientific and technical publishing system". As far as I know, the only quarto-specific code is located in the
thesis.qmdfile, theformatsection as well as the commands to include the separate files from thecontentfolder. - Quarto uses Pandoc, which is basically a universal converter for a huge number of file formats.
- To create PDF files from Markdown (or text files in general), you also need a LaTeX installation. I prefer MiKTeX, since it can automatically install missing packages and thus it only downloads the stuff you actually need for your document.
- To view the final PDF, I use SumatraPDF.
I am currently using VSCode as my main text editor, which is not completely open source, but I plan on switching to VSCodium.