NerdPress

NerdPress is ebook publishing software written for programmers, designers, and others comfortable with the command line.

Features

Generate a new ebook project from the command line.
Export your book to HTML, PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats.
Manage and store project files in a simple directory structure.
Use Markdown and HTML to write sections of your ebook.
Modify the look and feel of exported versions using CSS and Sass.
Built to make syntax highlighting and inline code and code block styling a top priority.
Uses a modular design that lets developers make the changes they need.

Default Dependencies

Certain tasks rely on external dependencies for proper execution:

DocRaptor - PDF generation
???? - EPUB generation
???? - MOBI generation

These dependencies are isolated as Ruby classes within the architecture so that developers are able to swap them out for other equivalent services as needed.

Installation

Add the gem to an existing project simply by adding a Gemfile (either via bundle init) or by creating one by hand:

$:> cd new_ebook
$:> bundle init
Writing new Gemfile to /home/user/projects/new_ebook/Gemfile

Then add the following line to the Gemfile:

gem 'nerdpress'

Alternately, you can install the gem globally (or within a gemset depending on how you manage Rubies on your workstation) and use the command line generator to create a new empty project directory.

$:> gem install nerdpress
$:> nerdpress new new_ebook

Both cases use Bundler to manage NerdPress and its dependencies, so:

$:> bundle install

TODO: revisit invocations and outputs after command line generator is working.

Usage

A NerdPress project is just a local directory that follows a prescribed structure.

.
├── images/
├── sections/
├── stylesheets/
├── .gitignore
├── config.yml
└── Gemfile

The main text of your book can be written as a sorted set of Markdown and HTML files in the sections/ directory. NerdPress will automatically recognize any files with common extensions for Markdown or HTML:

$:> cd new_ebook
$:> ls -1 sections/
 01_copyright.md
 02_welcome.html
 03_getting_started.markdown
 04_learning_the_ropes.htm
 05_finding_your_feet.mdn
 06_advanced_topics.xhtml
 07_big_conclusion.mdown

Assets in your images/ directory can be referenced from within text sections. NerdPress can identify GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs and SVGs.

![](images/diagram.png)

When exporting to one of the supported formats, the tool will look for a single stylesheet named for that format by default:

HTML - styles/html.(css|scss|sass)
PDF - styles/pdf.(css|scss|sass)
EPUB - styles/epub.(css|scss|sass)
MOBI - styles/mobi.(css|scss|sass)

Projects that follow these conventions require no additional configuration. Some of these settings can, however, be overridden in the config.yml file.

The gem includes commands for exporting the project in one of a number of formats:

# Build supported ebook formats
$:> nerdpress build epub mobi

# Build HTML and PDF formats
$:> nerdpress build html pdf

# Build all supported formats
$:> nerdpress build

# Same
$:> nerdpress build all

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/chriskottom/nerdpress.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Thanks

Work on this gem and the Rake-based ebook toolchain that came before it was heavily influenced by some of my favorite book-authoring Rubyists:

Avdi Grimm and Quarto
Pat Shaughnessy and his blog post My eBook build process and some PDF, EPUB and MOBI tips

chriskottom / nerdpress