from Hacker News

Convert a markdown manuscript to pdf/epub/mobi e-books

by accordionclown on 6/4/17, 6:40 PM with 27 comments

• by imroot on 6/4/17, 8:45 PM

  Have you looked at Softcover?

  https://github.com/softcover/softcover/

  I've used this for runbooks and it's awesome -- you always have an up-to-date copy of the runbook on your phone, and if you're using google/apple device management, you can remove them once your employee has left.

• by ageitgey on 6/4/17, 8:06 PM

  Thanks for sharing. My humble feedback would be that the website and README would be much more helpful however if they showed pictures of sample output. That's the main thing we want to see :-)

• by boyter on 6/4/17, 11:14 PM

  I was literally looking for something like this the other day now that LeanPub is no longer free to get started. Thanks for releasing it.

• by w4rh4wk5 on 6/5/17, 9:17 AM

  For the sake of it, I have created something slightly similar in the past which is currently rewritten in my spare time. It is not finished yet, but I can show you an example. Of course, I have the code for it online.

  Example: https://gist.github.com/W4RH4WK/d6e9861a7793bfce6d1a0c26a1ba...

  Project: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Dogx

  I am using Pandoc, KaTeX, Prims.js, and Reveal.js (for presentations). Additional logic is realized using Pandoc's filter mechanic and a Python scripts which converts TeX to SVG. The main intention is to output a standalone HTML, which can then be converted to a PDF using the awesome wkhtmltopdf.

  This has 2 underlying reasons: First, I want to push the behavior of consuming content on your screen, with modern, interactive technologies instead of killing trees by printing them out. Secondly, I hate TeX / LaTeX, but I cannot deny the need for its Math environment and TikZ.

• by awinter-py on 6/5/17, 3:18 AM

  I use just pandoc for previewing a large markdown manuscript and getting formatting right is hard.

  Thanks for releasing this.

• by pmontra on 6/5/17, 1:09 PM

  Usability suggestion for the web site: please add prev/next links to the end of the pages. I have to scroll back to the top on my phone, open the menu and select the next section. At every page.

• by dredmorbius on 6/5/17, 1:02 PM

  Pandoc alone gives good results for a large use-case.

  I frequently want portable versions of a document, or better formatting than, say, fixed-length ASCII. Often of historical works.

  Examples: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lhw2eq4qmnnwxijlcrfyba

• by molecule on 6/4/17, 10:02 PM

  typo, fyi:

  > if you want to isntall everything locally

  http://chrisanthropic.github.io/Open-Publisher-Documentation...

• by compumike on 6/5/17, 1:42 AM

  Does this support LaTeX style equations? I'd like to use Markdown+Mathjax for web, and still be able to export to PDF/ePub/mobi.

• by lovelearning on 6/5/17, 4:23 AM

  Does it support syntax highlighting for code snippets?