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[OT] Book authoring

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  [OT] Book authoring Miki Tebeka <miki.tebeka@gmail.com> - 2011-12-08 19:25 -0800
    Re: [OT] Book authoring Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2011-12-09 15:13 +0000
      Re: [OT] Book authoring Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> - 2011-12-09 10:43 -0500
      Re: [OT] Book authoring Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> - 2011-12-09 11:18 -0500
    Re: [OT] Book authoring Andrea Crotti <andrea.crotti.0@gmail.com> - 2011-12-09 16:25 +0000

#16893 — [OT] Book authoring

Greetings,

Any recommendations for a book authoring system that supports the following:
1. Code examples (with syntax highlighting and line numbers)
2. Output HTML, PDF, ePub ...
3. Automatic TOC and index
4. Search (in HTML) - this is a "nice to have"

Can I somehow use Sphinx?

Thanks,
--
Miki

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#16917

On 2011-12-09, Miki Tebeka <miki.tebeka@gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Any recommendations for a book authoring system that supports the following:
> 1. Code examples (with syntax highlighting and line numbers)
> 2. Output HTML, PDF, ePub ...
> 3. Automatic TOC and index
> 4. Search (in HTML) - this is a "nice to have"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language

I've used asciidoc extensively and reStructuredText a little. Asciidoc
will produce all the formats you mentioned (though I've only refularly
used HTML and PDF). reStructuredText is what's used for Python docs
isn't it?

> Can I somehow use Sphinx?

Don't know what Sphinx is.

And there's always the old stand-by LaTeX, but it's a bit more
heavyweight with more of a learning curve.  OTOH, it does produce
text-book quality output.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! BELA LUGOSI is my
                                  at               co-pilot ...
                              gmail.com            

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#16918

Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 2011-12-09, Miki Tebeka <miki.tebeka@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Any recommendations for a book authoring system that supports the following:
> > 1. Code examples (with syntax highlighting and line numbers)
> > 2. Output HTML, PDF, ePub ...
> > 3. Automatic TOC and index
> > 4. Search (in HTML) - this is a "nice to have"
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language
> 
> I've used asciidoc extensively and reStructuredText a little. Asciidoc
> will produce all the formats you mentioned (though I've only refularly
> used HTML and PDF). reStructuredText is what's used for Python docs
> isn't it?
> 
> > Can I somehow use Sphinx?
> 
> Don't know what Sphinx is.
> 

I think Sphinx is used for the python docs: it sits atop rST and does
all the transformations/processing to produce the desired output
( http://sphinx.pocoo.org )

> And there's always the old stand-by LaTeX, but it's a bit more
> heavyweight with more of a learning curve.  OTOH, it does produce
> text-book quality output.
> 

There is also orgmode, which has been used for a few books
(http://orgmode.org ). I know it does HTML and PDF (the latter through
latex), but I'm not sure about ePub: ISTR somebody actually did ePub for
his book but I don't remember details. The indexing is manual:
add #+index: foo entries as required.  But in general, imo, automatic
indexing for books sucks raw eggs (it works much better for highly
regular source code like the python source base).

Nick

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#16921

Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> wrote:

> There is also orgmode, which has been used for a few books
> (http://orgmode.org ). I know it does HTML and PDF (the latter through
> latex), but I'm not sure about ePub: ISTR somebody actually did ePub for
> his book but I don't remember details. 

Avdi Grimm produced his book "Exceptional Ruby"
(http://exceptionalruby.com ) this way, including ePub formats (I hope
mentioning Ruby in this context is not a punishable offense...)


Apparently, there is calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/ ) that will take
you from HTML to ePub. See this orgmode list article e.g.

     http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/41826

Nick

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#16920

On 12/09/2011 03:25 AM, Miki Tebeka wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Any recommendations for a book authoring system that supports the following:
> 1. Code examples (with syntax highlighting and line numbers)
> 2. Output HTML, PDF, ePub ...
> 3. Automatic TOC and index
> 4. Search (in HTML) - this is a "nice to have"
>
> Can I somehow use Sphinx?
>
> Thanks,
> --
> Miki

I think it depends on what you want exactly.
If it's a nice book with a scientific look and many complicated 
tables/figures
than I think that LaTeX is the way to go (maybe even org-mode but it's 
mainly
for emacs-fans).

The problem with LaTeX is that it's quite tricky to export to other 
formats, harder
to learn and not as flexible as a python-based solution as Sphinx.
I would suggest to try Sphinx and see if you're missing something..

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