asciiauthor is a project-generator for asciidoc projects.

Asciiauthor itself is written in rust (1.1). To compile it yourself, you need rust installed.

git clone https://github.com/Richterrettich/asciiauthor.git
cd asciiauthor
cargo build --release

Asciiauthor on its own is pretty boring. You'll need assciidoctor as well. Follow the instructions from http://asciidoctor.org/

First, initialize a new book-project:

asciiauthor init my_awesome_project
# |
# |-my_awesome_project
#        |- content
#             |- index.adoc
#             |- images
#        |- includes
#        |- .git
#        |- .gitignore

If you haven't setup your email/name in a global git config, asciiauthor will ask you to enter these information.

Now move towards the content directory. You can see one directory for images, as a file called index.adoc. This file is the root-asciidoc file. You can add your content there.

By the time your book grows, a one-file approach will become unmanageable. Asciiauthor is build to support modular book writing. You can use the section command to create a new section within your book:

cd my_awesome_project/content
# ls: index.adoc   images
asciiauthor section introduction
# |
# |- index.adox
# |- images
# |- 1_introduction
#        |- index.adoc
#        |- images
#

The newly created section will be added within your root-index:

cat index.adox
## output
#= my_awesome_project
#Rene Richter <[email protected]>
#include::../includes/config.adoc[]
#
#toc::[]
#
#include::1_introduction/index.adoc[]

You can nest these sections as deep as you like. But be careful, if you overdo it, your project will become a mess.

You can't use the section command outside of your content directory (or any subdirectory)

Some words of warning: Do note rename your directories manually. This will cause havoc.

Once a section is created, you can move it arround or delete it with asciiauthor. Consider the following:

# |
# | - 1_foo
# | - 2_bar
# | - 3_bazz
#       |- 1_foobar
asciiauthor swap 1 3
# |
# | - 1_bazz
#       |- 1_foobar
# | - 2_bar
# | - 3_foo
asciiauthor move 1 3
# |
# | - 1_bar
# | - 2_foo
# | - 3_bazz
#       |- 1_foobar
asciiauthor delete 2
# |
# | - 1_bar
# | - 2_bazz
#       |- 1_foobar
cat index.adoc
#= my_awesome_project
#Rene Richter <[email protected]>
#include::../includes/config.adoc[]
#
#toc::[]
#
#include::1_bar/index.adoc[]
#
#include::2_bazz/index.adoc[]

As you can see, these commands will keep your index.adox in sync with your directories.

Delete will delete the section. It will then rearrange the other sections to fill gaps.

There is a subtle difference between swap and move. Swap will just swap the position of two sections. In this example, it will swap section 1 with section 3.

Move on the other hand will rearrange all sections in between. So if you move section 1 to location 3, the other sections in between will be reduced by 1. This works in both directions:

# |
# | - 1_bazz
#       |- 1_foobar
# | - 2_bar
# | - 3_foo
asciiauthor move 3 1
# |
# | - 1_foo
# | - 2_bazz
#       |- 1_foobar
# | - 3_bar

asciiauthor uses the filesystem/git to determine your project root. There is no database involved. The information is stored in the .git/description file:

cd my_awesome_project
cat .git/description
# output
# my_awesome_project_book

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/