Academic Writing on Rachid Youven Zeghlache

Mermaid Diagrams in Inkscape: Native Extension Setup

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Generate Mermaid Diagrams Without Leaving Inkscape — For Academic & Technical Illustrators

You’re mid-design in Inkscape, and you need to add a flowchart, sequence diagram, or state machine. Right now, your workflow looks like this: switch to a browser, open Mermaid’s online editor, create the diagram, export it as PNG or SVG, come back to Inkscape, import it, and hope the formatting survived the conversion. By the time you’ve done this three times, you’ve lost 20 minutes and broken your creative flow.

Overleaf Dark Mode & Markdown Paste: Hidden Features

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You’re staring at a blinding white PDF preview at 11 PM, trying to finish your paper. Your eyes hurt. You’ve got structured notes in Obsidian or ChatGPT output in markdown, but you’re manually retyping section headers into LaTeX syntax. There’s a better way—and it’s already built into Overleaf.

Two Hidden Features That Actually Matter

PDF dark mode inverts your preview to a dark background without touching your exported document. Visual editor markdown paste converts markdown structure—headings, lists, formatting—directly into LaTeX when you paste. Both work on free accounts. No extensions required.

Write Research Papers in Markdown + Pandoc

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You’re staring at a LaTeX error message for the 47th time today. Your paper deadline is tomorrow, but you’re debugging \begin{figure} placement instead of refining your argument. There’s a better way: write in clean Markdown, get publication-ready PDFs with equations, cross-references, and IEEE/Springer formatting—all without touching LaTeX syntax until the final export.

What This Workflow Replaces

Direct LaTeX editing becomes Markdown + Pandoc conversion. You write in readable .md files with simple syntax for headings, citations, and figures. Pandoc (a universal document converter) transforms your Markdown into professional PDFs or LaTeX source files, using pandoc-crossref for numbered references and citeproc for bibliographies. Output matches journal templates—single-column, two-column IEEE, ACM formats—without manual \documentclass configuration.