[OT] Book authoring

[Miki Tebeka]

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,

 

[Grant Edwards]

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.

 

[Nick Dokos]

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?


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

 

[Nick Dokos]

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

 

[Andrea Crotti]

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,

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..