>>95885603
Let me try to illustrate some of the power of keeping everything orderly in data files and a template (which is just how it always works in latex). Let's say I make a quick and dirty table for my unit statline to look, but then a year from now I want to change the way the unit entry looks. And by this time I have typed out 8 codecies each with 20ish unit entries each! Going back to do that is a hell nightmare of a slog. But its impractical to operate under the presence that you have to get everything perfect from the start.

This compilation screenshot is showing off a small snippet of source material and what it ends up looking like when you compile it. Under the hood I have function I wrote which takes the stat line and formats it the way I want. While it looks complicated, a regular user who wants to use my class will never need to understand how it works. But because I separated my data from the formatting completely, I can design a new formatting function, and then automatically update EVERY document all at once in only a few minutes.

Now that said, It doesn't have to be latex that does this. Markdown does this too. And Im starting to poke around and think Affinity publisher might have had some features like this added since I last looked. You should check out the data merge manager tool to see, it seems to fill that role?
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/populate-pages-in-an-instant-with-affinity-publishers-powerful-data-merge-manager/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yFNAovgje8

This forum thread seems to indicate they are working on it.
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/195389-affinity-publisher-data-merge-manager-bug-no-fields/
While this one from 2 years before the other indicates that back then it didnt exist.https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/150873-importing-complex-json-structures/

>>95886136
>of course I know him, he's me