crowbook/README.md

Crowbook
========

[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/lise-henry/crowbook.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/lise-henry/crowbook)

Render a book written in markdown to HTML, Epub or PDF.

Crowbook's purpose is to allow you to automatically generate multiple
outputs formats from a book written in Markdown. Its main focus is
novels, and the default settings should (hopefully) generate readable
books with correct typography.

Example
-------

To see what Crowbook's output looks like, you can read (a
not-necessarily up-to-date version of) the Crowbook
guide (containing this README.md file and additional documentation)
rendered in [HTML](http://lise-henry.github.io/crowbook/book.html),
[PDF](http://lise-henry.github.io/crowbook/book.pdf) or [EPUB](http://lise-henry.github.io/crowbook/book.epub).


Installing
----------

### Packages ###

If you are on Debian GNU/Linux or Ubuntu (on a PC architecture), you can
download `.deb` packages on
[the releases page](https://github.com/lise-henry/crowbook/releases). 

### Binaries ###

See [the releases page](https://github.com/lise-henry/crowbook/releases)
to download a precompiled binary for your architecture (currently:
Linux, Windows and MacOSX). Just extract the archive and run
`crowbook` (or `crowbook.exe` on Windows). You might also want to copy
the binary somewhere in your `PATH` for later usage.

### Building ###

You'll need to have the [Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/) compiler
on your machine first; you can
[download and install it here](https://www.rust-lang.org/downloads.html). Once
it is down:

```bash
$ cargo install crowbook
```

will automatically download the latest `crowbook` release on
[crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/crowbook) and install it.

Usage
-----

The simplest command is:

```bash
$ crowbook <BOOK>
```

where `BOOK` is a configuration file. Crowbook will parse this
file and generate a book in HTML, Epub, LaTeX, and/or PDF,
according to the settings in the configuration file. 

To create a new book, assuming you have a
list of Markdown files, you can generate a template configuration file
with the `--create` argument:

```bash
$ crowbook --create my.book chapter_*.md
```

This will generate a default `my.book` file, which you'll need to
complete. This configuration file contains some metadata, options, and lists the
Markdown files. 

For more information see
[the configuration file](book_example/config.md).

It is also possible to give additional parameters to `crowbook`;
we have already seen `--create`, but if you want the full list, see
[the arguments](book_example/arguments.md).

Current features
----------------

### Output formats ###

Crowbook should correctly support HTML and EPUB (either
version 2 or 3) as output formats: rendered files should pass
respectively the [W3C validator](https://validator.w3.org/) and the
[IDPF EPUB validator](http://validator.idpf.org/) for a wide range of
(correctly Markdown formatted) input files. See the example book
rendered in [HTML](http://lise-henry.github.io/crowbook/book.html) and
[EPUB](http://lise-henry.github.io/crowbook/book.epub) on github.io.

LaTeX/PDF output is a bit more tricky: it should work reasonably well for
novels (the primary target of Crowbook), but `pdflatex` might occasionally
choke on some "weird" unicode character. See the example book rendered
in [PDF](http://lise-henry.github.io/crowbook/book.pdf) on github.io.

ODT output is currently experimental at best. It might work with very
basic formatting but still needs a *lot* of work. You can still see
the example book rendered in
[ODT](http://lise-henry.github.io/crowbook/book.odt) on github.io to
have an idea of the current status for this output format.

### Input format ###

Crowbook uses
[pulldown-cmark](https://crates.io/crates/pulldown-cmark) and thus
should support most of CommonMark Markdown. Inline HTML, however, is
not implemented, and probably won't be, as the goal is to have books
that can also be generated in PDF (and maybe eventually ODT).

Maybe the most specific "feature" of Crowbook is that (by default, it
can be deactivated) it tries to "clean" the input files. By default this
doesn't do much (except removing superfluous spaces), but if the
book's language is set to french it tries to respect french
typography, replacing spaces with non-breaking ones when it is
appropriate (e.g. in french you are supposed to put a non-breaking
space before '?', '!', ';' or ':'). This feature is relatively limited
at the moment, but I might try to add more options and support for
more languages.

### Links handling ###

Crowbook tries to correctly translate local links in the input
Markdown files: e.g. if you have a link to a markdown file that is
part of your book, it will be transformed into a link inside the
document. 

### Inline YAML blocks ###

Crowbook supports inline YAML blocks: 

```yaml
---
author: Me
title: My title
---
```

This is mostly useful when Crowbook is runned with the `--single`
argument (receiving a single Markdown file instead of a book
configuration file). E.g., the following Markdown file:

```yaml
---
author: John Doe
title: A book

output.html: book.html
---

This is a very tiny book!
```

can be processed with `crowbook --single foo.md` or `crowbook -s
foo.md` to produce the `book.html` file. This is useful for short
texts that typically only contain one "chapter".

### Bugs ###

See the [github's issue tracker](https://github.com/lise-henry/crowbook/issues).

Contributors
------------

* [Stéphane Mourey](http://stephanemourey.fr/) `<s+crowbook AT stephanemourey DOT fr>`

Acknowledgements
----------------

Besides the [Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/) compiler and standard
library, Crowbook uses the following libraries:

* [pulldown-cmark](https://crates.io/crates/pulldown-cmark) 
* [yaml-rust](https://crates.io/crates/yaml-rust) 
* [mustache](https://crates.io/crates/mustache) 
* [clap](https://github.com/kbknapp/clap-rs)
* [chrono](https://crates.io/crates/chrono) 
* [uuid](https://crates.io/crates/uuid) 
* [mime_guess](https://crates.io/crates/mime_guess)
* [crossbeam](https://crates.io/crates/crossbeam)
* [walkdir](https://crates.io/crates/walkdir)
* [rustc-serialize](https://crates.io/crates/rustc-serialize)

It also embeds [Highlight.js](https://highlightjs.org/) in HTML output
to enable syntax highlighting for code blocks.

It also uses configuration files from
[rust-everywhere](https://github.com/japaric/rust-everywhere) to use
[Travis](https://travis-ci.org/) and
[Appveyor](http://www.appveyor.com/) to generate binaries for
various platforms on each release.

While Crowbook directly doesn't use them, there was also inspiration
from [Pandoc](http://pandoc.org/) and
[mdBook](https://github.com/azerupi/mdBook).

Also, the [W3C HTML validator](https://validator.w3.org/) and the
[IDPF EPUB validator](http://validator.idpf.org/) proved very useful
during development.

ChangeLog
---------

See [ChangeLog](ChangeLog.md).

Library
-------

While the main purpose of Crowbook is to be runned as a command line,
the code is written as a library, so if you want to build on it you can
use it as such. You can look at the generated documentation on
[docs.rs](https://docs.rs/releases/search?query=crowbook).

License 
-------



Crowbook is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL),
version 2.1 or (at your option) any ulterior version. See 
[LICENSE](LICENSE.md) for more information.

Crowbook's logo is licensed under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en),
based on the
[Rust logo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rust_programming_language_black_logo.svg)
by Mozilla Corporation.

Crowbook includes binary (minified) CSS and Javascript files from
[Highlight.js](https://highlightjs.org/), written by Ivan
Sagalaev, licensed under the following terms:

> Copyright (c) 2006, Ivan Sagalaev
>
> All rights reserved.
>
> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
> modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
>  * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
>    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>  * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
>    documentation and/or other materials provided with the
>    distribution.
>  * Neither the name of highlight.js nor the names of its contributors 
>    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 
>    without specific prior written permission.
> 
> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY
> EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
> WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
> DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
> DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
> (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
> LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
> ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
> (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
> SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.