The reason for the appearance of this note was a very real story. It all started when a good friend of mine, a chemist by education, occupation and mentality, turned to me for help. The help consisted in the preparation of a publication on a certain chemical topic, with formulas, tables, diagrams and other attributes of Serious Scientific Labor (SNT), and chemistry was meant to be organic, and, therefore, formulas were structural and spreading, and tables were kilometer-long. The publication was needed, as usual, yesterday, layout and formatted according to the strict requirements of an organization unknown to me, with an annotation, a list of references about a variety of titles, with references, footnotes, quotes, epigraphs ...
Having understood the starting data, I fell into slight despondency. Most of all at that moment I wanted to refer to the circumstances of force majeure, congestion, insanity, seasonal exacerbation of foot and mouth disease - in short, to find any reason and - at will, in the pampas! But the sacramental "you're a programmer!" and the cautious “I will have to ...” had already sounded, the chemist's sighs were getting heavier, steadily falling down the already narrow path to retreat, the chemist's eyes behind thick glasses gave a fair head start to the signature look of Puss in Boots from “Shrek” ...
There was no turning back. The quest has begun.
The chemist did not come empty-handed. He brought many sheets of paper with for some reason already printed text and formulas, carefully drawn with a ballpoint pen in specially made gaps between paragraphs. However, it immediately became clear that most of the SNT still resides in the bowels of the mighty chemist mind, and the leaves are so, sketches, drafts and, in general, a test of the pen.
The situation was bleak. The chemist very confidently typed text in a notepad and even seemed to know how to highlight a line in Word in italics. I perfectly remembered the formulas of water and ethyl alcohol and was convinced that it was by no means possible to pour water into sulfuric acid. Or vice versa? It doesn't matter, the main thing is that the intersection of our knowledge was exhausted. There was only one question, but a global one: how? How to organize the work so that the chemist can pour out the yet unborn SNT on paper ... that is, in some text format, but I could figure out the structure of the document and layout it properly, inserting all the beauties mentioned above in the right places?
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