Book typesetting system written in Java. See the Javadoc. It supports fine typography, ligatures, kerning, automatic hyphenation, table of contents, index, photos, cross-references, footnotes, and right-to-left text. It converts a Markdown-inspired text file and generates a PDF. It can be used as a stand-alone application or as a library.
This typesetting system was only used once, to typeset a book written by my great uncle. A few things are hard-coded (minor layout spacing), but it shouldn't be too hard to get it to work for another type of book.
The input format is Markdown-inspired. The support for code markup is experimental and was never used for a real book.
Write in *italics* or [i]italics[/i], [sc]small caps[/sc],
and `code`. There's no bold support. You can continue a
paragraph onto the next line.
Separate paragraphs by blank lines.
% Start comments with percent signs.
1. Numbered lists. Must have a period after the number.
2. More items.
• Bulleted items start with a real bullet symbol.
• Type Alt-8 on a Mac to make it.
Use # symbols at the start of a paragraph to mark section headers:
# Part (for breaking the book into a few parts).
## Chapter (within a part).
### Minor section. This is like a chapter but outside a part, for things
like the preface.
#### Minor header within a chapter, not in the table of contents.
Indent entire sections to call out code, poetry, and signatures:
This is a line of code:
a = b; // Four-space indent.
This is for stuff you might type into a computer (user input);
<Three spaces and a less-than symbol.
And this is for the computer's output:
>Three spaces and a greater-than symbol.
Poetry has a slash:
/Three spaces and a slash.
/Make poems in a flash.
Signatures have a hyphen:
-John Smith
-London, 2018
(Signatures are just unindented lines.)
Commands to the system can be embedded in brackets:
[SEPARATOR] Three asterisks, for separating sections.
[VERTICAL-SPACE] Some vertical space.
[NEW-PAGE] Start a new page.
[ODD-PAGE] Skip to the next odd (right-hand) page.
[HALF-TITLE] Insert the half-title page (just the book's title).
[TITLE] Insert the full title page.
[COPYRIGHT] Insert the copyright page.
[TOC] Insert the table of contents.
[INDEX] Insert the index.
[Variable-Name: value] Set a variable's value. See below.
[@Darwin, Charles] Add an index entry. See below.
[^This is a footnote!] Footnote entry.
[!darwin.jpg Charles Darwin in 1859.] Photo pathname and an optional caption.
[LABEL id] Mark this spot with the specified id (any string). Doesn't
generate text.
[PAGE-OF id] Replaced with the page of the [LABEL] tag for this id.
[TODO anything] Ignored, for making notes to oneself.
[SHORTENED anything] Provides a shortened version of a section title.
This is useful for chapter titles that are too long to fit in the
headline (at the top of odd pages). Specify it like this:
## [SHORTENED Shortened version]Long version
[SECTION-NAME Chapter 7] Provides the "name" of a section. This isn't the
title, it's more like a label. In the table of contents, only the last
word ("7" in this example) is displayed, to the left of the section title.
At the top of the section, the full name is shown above the title.
Specify it like this:
## [SECTION-NAME Chapter 7]The Perishing Vegetable Memory
[open-bracket] Insert an open bracket.
Generally the start of the book will have a list of variables, followed by:
[HALF-TITLE]
[TITLE]
[COPYRIGHT]
[TOC]
These should be set at the top of the file. The format is:
[Variable-Name: value]
For example:
[Language: en]
[Title: On the Origin of Species]
[Author: Charles Darwin]
[Body-Font: Minion, regular, 11pt]
[Page-Width: 6in]
[Page-Height: 9in]
The following variables have arbitrary text for values:
Title
Subtitle (optional)
Author
Publisher-Name
Publisher-Location (e.g., "London, England")
Copyright (e.g., "Copyright © 1859 Charles Darwin")
Colophon (e.g., "First edition, November 1859")
Toc-Title (e.g., "Table of Contents")
Index-Title (e.g., "Index")
Language (e.g., "en_US" or "fr")
The language sets which hyphenation dictionary is used.
The Toc-Style variable is a string that can be either Classic
(the default) or Modern. Classic style has right-aligned page
numbers with a leader of dots from the chapter title. Modern
style has the page numbers right after the chapter titles.
The following variables have font values. Font have the format
typeface, variant, size, where typeface is registered
in the font/Typeface class, variant is one of regular,
bold, italic, bold italic, or small caps, and
the size is a real number followed by a unit, one of
pt, pc, in, cm, mm, or sp. For example,
[Body-Font: Minion, regular, 11pt].
Body-Font
Block-Quote-Font
Body-Code-Font
Caption-Font
Part-Header-Font
Chapter-Header-Font
Minor-Header-Font
Page-Number-Font
Code-Font
Output-Font
Input-Font
Headline-Font
Half-Title-Page-Title-Font
Half-Title-Page-Subtitle-Font
Title-Page-Author-Font
Title-Page-Title-Font
Title-Page-Subtitle-Font
Title-Page-Publisher-Name-Font
Title-Page-Publisher-Location-Font
Copyright-Page-Copyright-Font
Copyright-Page-Colophon-Font
Toc-Page-Title-Font
Toc-Page-Part-Font
Toc-Page-Chapter-Font
Footnote-Number-Font
The following variable is a typeface. The value is registered in
the font/Typeface class. It registers a typeface to use when
a glyph is not present in whatever typeface is supposed to be
used. This is useful for foreign-language glyphs such as
Hebrew. Times New Roman is a good typeface to use here.
Fallback-Typeface
The following variables are distances. A distance is a real
number followed by a unit, one of pt, pc, in, cm,
mm, or sp.
Page-Width
Page-Height
Page-Margin-Top
Page-Margin-Bottom
Page-Margin-Outer
Page-Margin-Inner
Footnote-Shift (how much to shift footnote references up)
See the typeset/Config class's method fillWithDefaults() for default
values for many of these variables.
Here are the values I used for the book I printed:
% General configuration.
[Language: fr]
% String configuration.
[Title: La famille Klat]
[Author: André Klat]
[Publisher-Name: Team Ten Press]
[Publisher-Location: San Francisco, California]
[Copyright: Copyright © 1989 André Klat]
[Colophon: Première édition, mai 2017]
[Toc-Title: Table des matières]
% Font configuration.
[Body-Font: Minion, regular, 11pt]
[Block-Quote-Font: Minion, italic, 11pt]
[Code-Font: Minion, regular, 11pt]
[Caption-Font: Minion, italic, 9.5pt]
[Part-Header-Font: Minion, small caps, 19pt]
[Chapter-Header-Font: Minion, small caps, 14pt]
[Minor-Header-Font: Minion, small caps, 11pt]
[Page-Number-Font: Minion, regular, 8pt]
[Headline-Font: Minion, regular, 8pt]
[Half-Title-Page-Title-Font: Minion, small caps, 19pt]
[Title-Page-Author-Font: Minion, small caps, 14pt]
[Title-Page-Title-Font: Minion, small caps, 27pt]
[Title-Page-Publisher-Name-Font: Minion, small caps, 9pt]
[Title-Page-Publisher-Location-Font: Minion, italic, 9pt]
[Copyright-Page-Copyright-Font: Minion, italic, 11pt]
[Copyright-Page-Colophon-Font: Minion, small caps, 9pt]
[Toc-Page-Title-Font: Minion, small caps, 14pt]
[Toc-Page-Part-Font: Minion, small caps, 11pt]
[Toc-Page-Chapter-Font: Minion, regular, 11pt]
% Dimensions configuration.
[Page-Width: 6in]
[Page-Height: 9in]
[Page-Margin-Top: 6pc]
[Page-Margin-Bottom: 6pc]
[Page-Margin-Outer: 6pc]
[Page-Margin-Inner: 8pc]
Put index entries in-line:
The insects in Madeira[@Madeira] which are not ground-feeders, ...
This will add an entry for "Madeira" referring to this page. Add sub-index entries separated by vertical bars:
The insects in Madeira[@Madeira|insects] which are not ground-feeders, ...
Right-to-left text is only minimally supported. Be sure to set the Fallback-Typeface
configuration setting if your main font does not have Hebrew or Arabic glyphs.
The typesetter does not handle explicit direction codes or Arabic shaping, and
does not handle parentheses well. Simple embedded Hebrew should work fine.
Copyright 2018 Lawrence Kesteloot
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.