LaTeX and confluence

Question

Hi Community!

I'd like to create clever system for documentation in combination with LaTeX and Git. My idea is following.

1. To have ability to write articles in Confluence, via Confluence web UI, but under the hood to have LaTeX syntax.

2. To have possibility to store Confluence articles in Git and vice versa, so when

3. someone is writing in LaTeX using e.g. Vim, can push source into Git.

4. Git will have hook into Confluence (maybe with the middle pause with some build tool) and push code into Confluence.

Is this possible to achieve with the confluence? Or is there another way?

We are using 6.4.3

Thanks in advance

Jindra

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

"Replacing Confluence's versioning system with git" is a major project in itself.  Part of the main reason Confluence exists is so it tracks page changes.

I guess you could set up some event system which takes a copy of the raw source of confluence pages and dumps them out to git when pages are saved, but the format wouldn't be of much use to other applications.   If people edited it other tools and had it pulled into Confluence, the tools would have to be, well, Confluence editors, or they'd have to understand the format.

I think you're trying to solve a problem that isn't really there.  Confluence with the Latex macro does almost all you need, including dumping pages out to users in different formats, versioning and presentation.  The only bits I think you need to do something about are:

* Maybe another export format so that Confluence can dump a whole page out in Latex format (rather than just the bits that are in Latex macros) so other Latex tools can work  with it. 
* Importing from Latex (and other?) formats

I don't know if there's an add-on for those, but I don't think the export is too hard (I did a WordPerfect one many many years ago - don't ask), and the import probably a little more tricky.

unknown · Answer

Thanks for quick response!

Yes, I know that Confluence has own version control back-end. But I wanted to centralize them into one version control.

Why we want to use LaTex is that when you want to publish something from the confluence, i.e to customer, sorry to say, its ugly (we devs really like confluence! :) . Some of us are using LaTeX some of others are copying text from confluence and editing text for export in different tools. My idea was, if there are some guys who love LaTeX, and are capable to use that, then why to not store Confluence articles in LaTeX format for those, who are not wiling to write in LaTeX but want to stay in Confluence but using different tools when they need to print nice version for external consumers.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

This seems rather convoluted to me, and unnecessary.

There is no reason to store Confluence pages in git.  Confluence already has versioning for pages so all changes are captured.  There are no benefits from duplicating the pages out to git and pushing them back out of there that I can work out.

Step back to what the end users want to do and what they would get from what you're trying to do.

To me, it seems like the end-user needs are "A documentation system with versioned pages that include mathematical formula".

I would

* Use Confluence, pretty much off-the-shelf
* Add the Latex add-on (Suggestion - I've been using this one for over a decade - https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.stepstonetech.confluence.plugins.latex/server/overview .  There are others in the marketplace, but I've not needed to try them)
* Tell your users they can now enter Latex markup directly into Confluence and have it rendered as the formulae they're writing
* For people writing stuff outside Confluence, if they still don't want to use Confluence, then yes, put their markup somewhere and write something that can wrap it with the right Latex macro and push it into Confluence as a page for them.  (But encourage them to work in Confluence)