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Biggest downside of this tool is inability to render PDF or ePub[1]. This is why we recently switched to Quarto[2]. Typst is also a good alternative, already mentioned in other comments. [1] https://github.com/rust-lang/mdBook/issues/815 [2] https://quarto.org/
Pandoc[1] helps to convert markdown to pdf and epub [1] https://pandoc.org/epub.html
Depending on the content, I would recommend AsciiDoc (and not Markdown) to write a book. Markdown might be a good fit for text-only books like fiction, but AsciiDoc has much more useful formattings for structrured documents like technical or scientific books.
https://github.com/daviddrysdale/mdbook-asciidoc
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Opinions—Hugo or Jekyll for blogs. Yes, that Jekyll! Hugo gives you more rope to shoot yourself in the foot with. MkDocs or Docusaurus for documentation. MdBook is not in the running, IMO, unless it’s radically improved since the last time I checked. And here’s my hot take—most generators have a lot of the same design flaws. Routing is generally a mistake—you should instead design a system where every page has a URL…
Regarding MkDocs there's the great Material for MkDocs [0] for documentation. [0] https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/
While we're on the topic of MD, what's the best system for Markdown-based static blogs these days? With good code highlighting, images, colors, etc.
There are 355 generators on this page, many of which support markdown: https://jamstack.org/generators/
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Typst is great, but really doesn't really serve the primary use case of mdbook which is building documentation websites or digital knowledge gardens that are accessible as a website. If you are typesetting a research paper or writing a technical book for print publication typst is a great solution, but for a lot folks not having web support is an absolute dealbreaker.
Apparently HTML output support is coming for typst. I'm very keen, since to be honest markdown just isn't powerful enough to support a lot of the typesetting I want to do. For example, using markdown you can't put text in boxes, reuse styles, link references to diagrams or sections, number headings, do math, and so on. All of this stuff is crazy useful in typesetting. I love markdown, but its missing too many feature…
While we're on the topic of MD, what's the best system for Markdown-based static blogs these days? With good code highlighting, images, colors, etc.
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I actually got a lot of good references from this thread.
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+1 for quarto. I love it for my personal website, and I use it on a daily basis to create technical reports for my day job.
Do you have any details on your workflow for reports? I “think” in .mds and the. use a VScode extension that creates to PDF on .md save with a custom/header footer template- works 95% of the time but it’s more brittle than I’d like.
FWIW, when you click "Render", this is the output command that RStudio shows: `quarto preview FILE.qmd --to pdf --no-watch-inputs --no-browse`
Of course, you will have to remember to properly format tables, omit `&` where possible in tables, figure titles, etc. There are so many nuances, but once you've got them figured out, report generation is very smooth.
---
title: Title
author: Author Name
date: today
date-format: long
pdf-engine: xelatex
format:
pdf:
number-sections: true
toc: true
toc-depth: 3
mainfont: Roboto # available fonts are dependent on your machine/environment
sansfont: Roboto
include-in-header:
text: |
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{lastpage}
\usepackage{float}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhead[L]{\empty}
\fancyfoot[R]{[Company] Confidential}
\fancyfoot[C]{\thepage\ of \pageref*{LastPage}}
---
```{r setup, echo=FALSE, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(fig.align = "center",
warning = FALSE,
echo = FALSE,
message = FALSE,
dev = "cairo_pdf")
```
{{}}
{{}}
If I could wave a wand and extend it in any way I chose, I'd want the ability to implement macros (or the equivalent) a la TeX, so as to automate doing fancier formatting in HTML.
While we're on the topic of MD, what's the best system for Markdown-based static blogs these days? With good code highlighting, images, colors, etc.
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There are 355 generators on this page, many of which support markdown: https://jamstack.org/generators/
Pandoc, an html template for the headers/footers and optional js, a css and a small shell script is usually enough.