Kitabu is a framework for creating e-books from Markdown using Ruby. Using Prince PDF generator, you'll be able to get high quality PDFs. Also supports EPUB, Mobi, and HTML generation.
While Prince is too expensive (495USD for a single user license), the free version available at http://www.princexml.com/download generates a PDF with a small logo on the first page, which is removed when sent to a printer; you can use it locally for viewing the results immediately. When you're done writing your e-book, you can use DocRaptor, which have plans starting at $15/mo.
- Write using Markdown
- Book layout support
- Syntax highlight
- Generate HTML, PDF, e-Pub (version 3.3), and Mobi
- Table of Contents automatically generated from chapter titles
To install Kitabu, you'll need a working Ruby 3.2+ installation. If you're cool with it, just run the following command to install it.
gem install kitabu
After installing Kitabu, run the following command to check your external dependencies.
$ kitabu check
Prince XML: Converts HTML files into PDF files.
Installed.
Calibre's ebook-convert: Converts ePub e-books into .mobi files.
Installed.
There are no hard requirements here; just make sure you cleared the correct dependency based on the formats you want to export to.
To create a new e-book, just run
$ kitabu new mybook
This command creates a directory mybook with the following structure:
.
├── Gemfile
├── Gemfile.lock
├── Guardfile
├── assets
│ ├── fonts
│ ├── images
│ │ ├── cover.png
│ │ ├── kitabu.svg
│ │ ├── markdown.svg
│ │ └── up.svg
│ ├── scripts
│ └── styles
│ ├── epub.css
│ ├── html.css
│ ├── pdf.css
│ ├── print.css
│ └── support
│ ├── kitabu.css
│ ├── normalize.css
│ ├── notes.css
│ └── toc.css
├── config
│ ├── helpers.rb
│ ├── kitabu.yml
│ └── locales
│ └── en.yml
├── templates
│ ├── epub
│ │ ├── cover.erb
│ │ ├── page.erb
│ │ └── toc.erb
│ └── html
│ └── layout.erb
└── text
├── 01_Getting_Started.md
├── 02_Creating_Chapters.md
├── 03_Syntax_Highlighting.md.erb
├── 04_Dynamic_Content.md.erb
├── 05_Exporting_Files.md
└── 06_Changelog.md
13 directories, 28 files
The config/kitabu.yml file holds some information about your book; so you'll
always change it.
The generated structure is actually a good example. So make sure you try it!
There's a generated sample available on the attachments directory • PDF / EPUB / MOBI / HTML.
Now it's time to write your e-book. All your book content will be placed on the text directory. Kitabu requires you to separate your book into chapters. A chapter is nothing but a directory that holds lots of text files. The e-book will be generated using every folder/file alphabetically. So be sure to use a sequential numbering as the name. Here's a sample:
* text
* 01_Introduction
* 01_introduction.md
* 02_What_is_Ruby_on_Rails
* 01_MVC.md
* 02_DRY.md
* 03_Convention_Over_Configuration.md
* 03_Installing_Ruby_on_Rails
* 01_Installing.md
* 02_Mac_OS_X_instructions.md
* 03_Windows_instructions.md
* 04_Ubuntu_Linux_instructions.md
If you prefer, you can add a chapter per file:
* text
* 01_Introduction.md
* 02_What_is_Ruby_on_Rails.md
* 03_Installing_Ruby_on_Rails.md
You'll want to see your progress eventually; it's time for you to generate the
book PDF. Just run the command kitabu export and your book will be created on
the output directory.
Kitabu can generate a Table of Contents (TOC) based on your h1-h6 tags. To print
the TOC, you need to print a variable called toc, using the eRb tag.
<%= toc %>
Markdown files (and their .md.erb counterparts) support frontmatter, a section
that can inject variables to the page. Notice that the contents inside the ---
delimiters must be valid YAML annotation and only basic types can be used
(booleans, numbers, strings, nils and hashes/arrays with these same types).
Right now there's only one special value called section, which defines the
class section when generating files. This allows you to have files inside your
text directory that doesn't necessarily should have styling like regular
chapters. For instance, this is how you can define a changelog section:
---
section: changelog
---
## Changelog
### Jan 26, 2024
- Initial releaseNote
Notice that section will be retrieved from the first file, even if you have
multiple files defining a section with a directory.
This meta data will be inject on your template using the variable meta. If you
have other variables, you could print them as <%= meta["varname"] %>.
You can also have .md.erb files. You can mix Markdown and HTML, like the
following:
## This the chapter title
<%= image_tag "myimage.png" %>
The above content must be placed in a .md.erb file. The generated content will
be something like this:
<img src="images/myimage.png" />You book's helpers can be added to config/helpers.rb, as this file is loaded
automatically by kitabu.
You can see available helpers on https://github.com/fnando/kitabu/blob/main/lib/kitabu/helpers.rb.
To highlight code, use fenced code blocks.
``` ruby
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_presence_of :login, :password, :email
validates_uniqueness_of :login, :email
end
```
You can even provide options:
```php?start_line=1&line_numbers=1
echo "Hello World";
```
The following Redcarpet options are enabled:
autolinkfenced_code_blocksfootnoteshard_wraphighlightno_intra_emphasissafe_links_onlyspace_after_headersstrikethroughsuperscripttables
There are a few hooks that allows manipulating the content. You can use
before_render and after_render to process the Markdown content. You can add
such hooks to your config/helpers.rb file.
Kitabu::Markdown.add_hook(:before_render) do |content|
# manipulate content and return it.
content
end
Kitabu::Markdown.add_hook(:after_render) do |content|
# manipulate content and return it.
content
endYou can use custom fonts on your ebooks. Just add them to the fonts directory
(you can create this directory on your book's root directory if it doesn't
exist).
Then, on assets/styles/support/fonts.css you can add the @font-face
declaration.
@font-face {
font-family: "Open Sans Condensed Bold";
src: url("../../fonts/OpenSans-CondBold.ttf");
}Finally, to use this font, do something like this:
.chapter > h1 {
font-family: "Open Sans Condensed Bold";
}Instead of doing the above manually, you can also use Prince's --scanfonts
option.
$ prince --scanfonts assets/fonts/* > assets/styles/support/fonts.cssJust remember to replace the generated path to be something like ../../fonts
instead.
Tip
In most cases, it's easier to redefine sans-serif, serif and monospace
fonts. To know more about how to do this, read Prince's
Redefining the generic font families
documentation.
If you're unsure if fonts are actually being used on PDF files, use the
environment variable PRINCEOPT to disable system fonts.
$ PRINCEOPT='--no-system-fonts --debug --log output/prince.log' kitabu export --only pdf
=> e-book couldn't be exported
$ tail -n10 output/prince.log
Sat Jan 27 18:39:10 2024: debug: font request: Caslon, serif
Sat Jan 27 18:39:10 2024: warning: Ensure fonts are available on the system or load them via a @font-face rule.
Sat Jan 27 18:39:10 2024: warning: For more information see:
Sat Jan 27 18:39:10 2024: warning: https://www.princexml.com/doc/help-install/#missing-glyphs-or-fonts
Sat Jan 27 18:39:10 2024: internal error: Unable to find any available fonts.
Sat Jan 27 18:39:10 2024: finished: failure
Sat Jan 27 18:39:10 2024: ---- endKitabu uses Redcarpet as the Markdown
engine. You can override the default processor by setting
Kitabu::Markdown.processor. This can be done by adding something like the
following to config/helpers.rb:
Kitabu::Markdown.processor = Redcarpet::Markdown.new(
Kitabu::Markdown::Renderer.new(hard_wrap: false, safe_links_only: true),
tables: true,
footnotes: true,
space_after_headers: true,
superscript: true,
highlight: true,
strikethrough: true,
autolink: true,
fenced_code_blocks: true,
no_intra_emphasis: true
)The above options are Kitabu's defaults.
If you're not planning to buy PrinceXML, consider using DocRaptor. Here's how you can easily do it:
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d'{"user_credentials":"YOUR_CREDENTIALS_HERE", "doc":{"name":"kitabu.pdf", "document_type":"pdf", "test":"false", "document_url":"https://example.com/output/kitabu.pdf.html"}}' http://docraptor.com/docs > kitabu.pdf- Markdown: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax
- Markdown PHP: https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/
- Some PrinceXML tips by the creator himself: https://css4.pub
- PrinceXML: license
For more details about how to contribute, please read https://github.com/fnando/kitabu/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md.
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License. A copy of the license can be found at https://github.com/fnando/kitabu/blob/main/LICENSE.md.
Everyone interacting in the kitabu project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.
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