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MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

rust-lang.github.io

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Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#91

Tangent question: What are currently viable Markdown alternatives? Imho Markdown is a overall terrible and (especially regarding technical writing!) very limited format. But nothing else seems popular. Why actually? Are there any realistic alternatives? Thanks for some hints!

In the future, Djot might be up to the task, but currently it’s more fixing issues with Markdown & roadmapping improvements.

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#92
post #63

So far, in this thread (in no particular order): - [Jekyll]( https://jekyllrb.com/ ) - [Hugo Book]( https://github.com/alex-shpak/hugo-book ) - [MdBook]( https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/ ) - [MkDocs]( https://www.mkdocs.org/ ) - [MkDocs Material]( https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ ) - [GitBook]( https://www.gitbook.com/ ) - [Antora]( https://antora.org/ ) - [Docusaurus]( https://docusaurus.io/ ) - [Next…

Also, Bookdown (https://bookdown.org/)

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Markdown is a really poor storage format. There is quasi-official standard (CommonMark), but since it's feature-poor, people mostly use something else, like GitHub Markdown. Individual apps often extend Markdown in various incompatible ways. I hope GitHub and Obsidian are going to synchronise their MarkDown extensions in near future and this will become The Standard. Whatever a case, anybody can easily write a scri…

> Without a need for software as complex and resource-hungry as a web browser engine ePub would require. I know that technology purists love that, but any electronic reading device handles HTML easily (especially the simple HTML in ePubs). The point becomes moot when your book contains images/illustrations and you (like a normal reader) want to view them within the content. You will use some Markdown formatter/viewer…

> Then go for plain text. All those headings and asterisks are a distraction anyway. Years ago, many e-books used to be distributed in plain text in fact.

Markdown is more semantic. E.g. it gives you a ToC (a very important feature of a good book, and it has to be semantic markup-based when you decouple the text from the view by omitting explicit pagination) for free.

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#94

I’ve tried MdBook, Jekyll, and MkDocs. MdBook is slick for basic projects, but I felt it was too minimalistic for me. When I dug into the source for the MdBook sites that I liked, I saw that they had extended MdBook with some custom Rust code. My recommendations are: - MkDocs: Good default choice, reasonably flexible. - Jekyll: For people who want a little more flexibility—things like landing pages, blogs, etc. - Ant…

Thanks, I hadn't heard of Antora, but the behaviours of assembling docs from multiple repos and using branches for versioning is exactly what I want. Too bad it's not using MDX though, as all our existing docs are markdown + interactive react components.

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without a need for software as complex and resource-hungry as a web browser engine ePub would require. I know that technology purists love that, but any electronic reading device handles HTML easily (especially the simple HTML in ePubs). The point becomes moot when your book contains images/illustrations and you (like a normal reader) want to view them within the content. You will use some Markdown formatter/viewer…

> Then go for plain text. All those headings and asterisks are a distraction anyway. Years ago, many e-books used to be distributed in plain text in fact. Markdown is more semantic. E.g. it gives you a ToC (a very important feature of a good book, and it has to be semantic markup-based when you decouple the text from the view by omitting explicit pagination) for free.

HTML is also semantic. It also has a good standard, its support is omnipresent, is extensible, actually supports tables etc.

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#96

Why? I'm mystified as to why there are vanishingly few VIEWERS for Markdown. One open-source project after another offers up .md files for documentation, but have you ever tried to find a plain VIEWER for Markdown?

vscode has one built in ctrl + shift + v

Thanks, but I mean a dedicated viewer… not an editor that has preview capability. There are several of those.

Just a lightweight viewer.

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#97

I just wonder why Markdown (or whatever alike, I know there are alternatives superior in numerous ways) is not the default format for books, documents and everything. Some years ago I switched to Typora and discovered I hardly ever need Word/Writer for anything I write and I only use it to open documents others would send me. 90% of books I read don't look like having a serious reason for not being in the Markdown fo…

There is a lot of nuance and complication to typesetting books that isn't apparent to an untrained observer, and markdown + css simply isn't sophisticated enough to handle it. Even html/css + js is technically capable but far far behind the state of the art in digital typesetting.

This is also a very classic "well I could do it better" engineer trap so please don't assume that without some research. It's an ancient domain relative to what we're talking about here and has accumulated a lot of valuable insight & technique that should not be simply discarded because markdown is almost good enough for some things.

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#98
post #57
post #15

I have been using Mdbook for a while and its been great, I maintain a simple knowledge base for myself https://til-mraza007.vercel.app/ I love how simple it is

You might have to update the Bluetooth article; you do not stop bluetooth with 'enable' ;-)

MkDocs with Obsidian Mkdocs? https://obsidian-publisher.netlify.app

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#99
post #63

So far, in this thread (in no particular order): - [Jekyll]( https://jekyllrb.com/ ) - [Hugo Book]( https://github.com/alex-shpak/hugo-book ) - [MdBook]( https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/ ) - [MkDocs]( https://www.mkdocs.org/ ) - [MkDocs Material]( https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ ) - [GitBook]( https://www.gitbook.com/ ) - [Antora]( https://antora.org/ ) - [Docusaurus]( https://docusaurus.io/ ) - [Next…

Plz add [Lektor](https://getlektor.com).

Happy user here.

Re: MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown

#100
post #63

So far, in this thread (in no particular order): - [Jekyll]( https://jekyllrb.com/ ) - [Hugo Book]( https://github.com/alex-shpak/hugo-book ) - [MdBook]( https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/ ) - [MkDocs]( https://www.mkdocs.org/ ) - [MkDocs Material]( https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/ ) - [GitBook]( https://www.gitbook.com/ ) - [Antora]( https://antora.org/ ) - [Docusaurus]( https://docusaurus.io/ ) - [Next…

Notable mention to [Sphinx](https://www.sphinx-doc.org/). It's workflow is more tuned to the "book" format rather than the blog, forum or thread format.
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