[xigoi]

What else would you use to generate PDFs from a text-based template?

[jayknight]

20-ish years ago I wrote a system to do that with xslt. Would not recommend.

[sixtyj]

E.g. Pandoc, universal tool…

[dfc]

You will be surprised to learn that pandoc uses latex for generating the PDF. It's barely hidden:

https://www.pandoc.org/demo/example33/2.4-creating-a-pdf.htm...

[sixtyj]

I know it ;) But we are talking about how to use something universal. I like pandoc as it is easy to use and… boring.

[dfc]

Your original comment before editing complained about using pdflatex as if it was not part of the pandoc toolchain. It was not about pandoc being universal.

[xigoi]

Doesn’t Pandoc just use LaTeX under the hood?

[__mharrison__]

Pandoc works with typst too.

[chromanoid]

A good XSL-FO impl with docbook or something like that?

[pepa65]

Apart from typst, I've used weasyprint.

[smartmic]

DITA, see my other comment on level up.

[henrebotha]

Asciidoctor?

[Iwan-Zotow]

Docbook

[spider-mario]

ReportLab?