Crowbook

Creates a book in HTML, Epub or PDF format from markdown files.

Usage

The simplest command is:

$ crowbook <BOOK>
$ # or runninng from cargo:
$ cargo run <BOOK>

Where BOOK is a configuration file. Crowbook will then parse the config file and generate book in HTML, Epub, LaTeX, and/or PDF, according to the setting in the configuration file.

This configuration file contains some metadata, options, and list the Markdown files. Here is a basic example:

author: Joan Doe
title: Some book
lang: en

output_html: some_book.html

+ chapter_1.md
+ chapter_2.md
+ chapter_3.md
+ ...

For more information see the configuration file, or the whole book_example directory.

It is also possible to give additional paramaters to crowbook; arguments set from the command line will override the ones set in the BOOK configuration file.

USAGE:
        crowbook [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] <BOOK>

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information
    -v, --verbose    Activate verbose mode

OPTIONS:
        --autoclean <BOOL>    Try to clean input markdown [values: true, false]
        --numbering <BOOL>    Number chapters or not [values: true, false]
    -o, --output <FILE>       Specify output file
    -t, --to <FORMAT>         Generate specific format [values: epub, epub, pdf, html, tex]

ARGS:
    <BOOK>    A file containing the book configuration

Command line options allow to override options defined in <BOOK> configuration file. 
E.g., even if this file specifies 'verbose: false', calling 'crowbook --verbose <BOOK>' 
will activate verbose mode.

Note that Crowbook generates output files relatively to the directory where <BOOK> is:
$ crowbook foo/bar.book --to pdf --output baz.pdf
will thus generate baz.pdf in directory foo and not in current
directory.

Features

Done

• Support for some simple formatconfiguration files to list chapters and metadatas, so you just run crowbook some_file and you don't have to pass more options, it generates the rest.
• Support for basic Markdown features useful in writing novels.
• Support for Epub2 and Epub3 format as output.
• Very basic support for LaTeX format as output, and PDF through it.
• Support for HTML format as output.
• Support for basic french typography in HTML/Epub format, and by that I mostly mean non-breaking spaces.
• Decent default templates and CSS.
• Some configuration for HTML/Epub templates and CSS.

ToDo

• Real support for LaTeX.
• Allow more customization.
• Provide a binary which accepts some option and not just an input file.
• Support for easily embedding custom fonts (and other files) in Epub/HTML.
• Correct support for technical books.
• Support for ODT as output format?

See also Bugs.

License

Currently, MIT but this might change.

Acknowledgements

Besides the Rust compiler and standard library, Crowbook uses the following libraries:

• pulldown-cmark (for parsing markdown)
• mustache (for templating)
• chrono (date and time library)
• uuid (to generate uuid)

While Crowbook directly doesn't use them, there was also some inspiration from Pandoc and mdBook.