Have you had a look at Apple iBooks author? https://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/
Pages now saves ePub, might be a better tool for most of the job.
Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#42vim!
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#43Please do not use LaTeX. If your textbook is supposed to have special layout needs, you will have a hard time with LaTeX. Tables are a real nuisance in LaTeX as well - normally you have your data in some other tool like Excel or some Jupyter notebook or CSV. Turning the data into a nicely looking and well-placed LaTeX table is not straightforward. Sure, there are specialized LaTeX extension packages for a lot of func…
Personally I find it pretty painful creating large documents in Word. Creating documents in Latex helps me focus on the text/structure without worrying about figure/table placement (I can still have them in the markup, but and fix all the formatting issues after I’ve written the text).
I think it depends on author mentality somewhat. Word works well for some, Latex for others.
It might also be worth considering Markdown or plain HTML. Particularly if an ePub/kindle version is a possibility.
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#44Use your preferred variation of plaintext - markdown, reStructuredText, etc. - in as plain an editor as you can come up with. (There are plenty of minimalist/distraction free plaintext editors out there if you'd rather not use your favorite code editor.)
The hardest part in long form copy is getting the content written. Anything visual on top is just distraction that will get in your way and slow you down.
Once you've the copy, use Pandoc or equivalent, and then typeset and format using a more sophisticated medium as needed.
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#45Bookdown is super easy. Some oreilly books (eg R for Data Science) used it.
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#46plaintext / .txt / .md
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just that. Maybe Word in the first place, for the spell checking. But, other than that, just use it as a plain text editor. I also find it useful to create a new file for each chapter.
You don't need Word for spell checking. For instance, Emacs can use ISpell, ASpell, etc.
And in emacs you can use org mode with export to pdf though latex
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#48Latex
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a book I'd recomment ConTeXt. It's rougher around the edges but it's geared more towards "rich" presentation with sidebars, imaages, maybe even some color vs LaTeX which at it's core is optimized for things like journal articles with relatively little formatting. If I was going to compare them to commerical software, ConTexT is closer to InDesign and LaTeX is closer to Word.
I'll simply quote a thread by William Adams on the context mailing list (copied from here http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Comparison_between_ConTeXt_and... , the link to the mailing list does not work) With a graphical tool, one is limited to the automation which the developers are willing to build into the tool and sentenced to handling manually everything else, every time that there's a change, e.g., if you have a ke…
I am comfortable with making anything in Adobe Indesign.
If you are going to make things in Indesign, it should be as a last step process, after the full draft has been made. Otherwise you will slow down your writing by a lot.
Quark is rather outdated IMO, little has changed over the years. It has terrible UI and native keybind controls
I would use some flavor of markdown + some notetaking tool that supports it. A good example would be gitbooks.io, there's other ones out there too.
Latex & Variants is what has always been used for textbooks. Can't go wrong with it
Re: Ask HN: What software should I use to write a textbook?
#50Use a word processor to write a book. Think about that other stuff after your book is written. You don't need to think about it yet. You need to write that book.
Yeah, I think one of the risks here is spending so much time picking the right tool that you lose interest in writing the book. Latex is great for writing papers, formatting, references, but arguably not great for churning out thoughts. Sometimes a pencil and paper will do.