Using Hazel for the automatization of the conversion: Markdown -> Latex -> PDF

Using Hazel for the automation of the conversion: Markdown -> Latex -> PDF
As I have explained in my last posts, I am trying to craft a writing chain that would allow me to write in Markdown and easily convert this readable text to Latex and PDF. I can even download the final PDF file on my iPAD using a Dropbox folder.
Hazel is a very nice automatization system that I was planning to explore more in details, and it indeed solves a lot of problems in this case.
My chain works as the following (this completes my previous message):

1. I write my text in IAWrite (under OSX or iOS) and they get saved in the iCloud (suppose that the file is called mytext.md).
2. On the desktop, these files appear in the mobile documents folder (~/Library/Mobile Documents/74ZAFF46HB~jp~informationarchitects~Writer/Documents). I use a first Hazel script (see Figure 1), attached to this folder, for copying this file to a Dropbox folder, as soon as a new version is saved. 
   

   

   Fig. 1: Copying the .md file

3. When the .md file is copied, other Hazel scripts, attached to the destination Dropbox folder, start to play.
4. One script converts the file to .html and .opml formats. This script calls multimarkdown for converting the copied markdown file to these formats (see Figures 2–3).

   

   Fig 2: Running the script for converting to HTML and OPML
   

   

   Fig 3: The script for calling multimarkdown

5. Another script (see Figures 4–5) converts the file to Latex format (only if the md file contains the meta tags that are necessary for obtaining a complete Latex file at the end of the conversion – otherwise Multimarkdown converts Latex snippets that cannot be compiled by Latex).

   

   Fig 4: Calling the script for converting to Latex

   

   Fig 5: The script that calls multimarkdown

6. A last script (see Figure 6) converts the Latex file obtained in the previous step to PDF, using latexmake. Latexmake is a Perl script that automatically runs the necessary operations for converting your tex file to PDF (the final format I have chosen here). Moreover, I have discovered that multimarkdown is not able to correctly convert accented characters in the meta tag fields. So, I have problems if the title, for example, is in French. For correctly converting these Unitype characters, one needs to compile the document using xelatex, and not pdflatex. The full Bash script I use can be downloaded below (including some commented instructions that was useful for debugging it, and that could be useful in some other contexts).

   
   

   

   Fig 6: Calling the script that runs latexmake

Download the script
  

Using Marked for previewing and exporting Markdown text

So, I am learning Markdown using iAWriter and I have discovered a very nice tool for previewing my text as it will be typeset, once converted: Marked. Marked uses MathJax for previewing even your equations, written following the standard proposed by Multimarkdown.

Using markdown as a lightweight LateX editing support on iPad and iCloud

I have been looking at the ways of editing LateX files on the iPad. There are already interesting LateX editor (TexTouch, TexWriter etc.), but I find them quite heavy to use yet, and Latex files are not very nice to decode on the small screen.
Markdown is a much simpler and readable tagging language invented by John Gruber (aka Daring Fireball). I have been tempted to play with it several times in the past, without really getting there. My preferred Latex editor is Lyx now, but we are really not ready to get an iPad version of this very nice editor. So Markdown has seemed as an interesting possibility to explore for writing Latex in a nice editor as iAWriter. Since MultimarkDown offers quite efficient translation of Markdown to Latex (including the equations and figures), as week as other formats like HTML and OPML (useful for importing in Freemind).
Here is my automatic setup for this workflow

1. synchronizing iAWriter documents between the iPad and my laptop using iCloud;
2. copying the file from the iCloud folder (~/Library/Mobile Documents/74ZAFF46HB~jp~informationarchitects~Writer/Documents) to a Dropbox folder each time it has been updated (with Hazel);
3. converting the .md file in the Dropbox folder to Latex, HTML and OPML using Multimarkdown in Hazel, a soon as a new version if copied there;
4. converting the Latex to pdf using by running pdflatex+bibtex+pdflatex twice).

For the third step, I had to adapt the Multimarkdown latex support files to create a standard article export, instead of the memoir one used by default.
Now I can edit my documents on the iPad or on the MacBook using iAWriter and they get automatically synched and converted. If my MacBook is on, I can even get back the compiled PDF back on the iPad, using a Dropbox access (through GoodReader, for example).
I can give more details for this process if you ask for it in the comments.