Skip to content

Commit e958fc8

Browse files
committed
update readme
1 parent e286b20 commit e958fc8

File tree

1 file changed

+48
-35
lines changed

1 file changed

+48
-35
lines changed

README.md

Lines changed: 48 additions & 35 deletions
Original file line numberDiff line numberDiff line change
@@ -1,79 +1,92 @@
11
# mdBook [![Travis-CI](https://travis-ci.org/azerupi/mdBook.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/azerupi/mdBook) [![Crates.io version](https://img.shields.io/crates/v/mdbook.svg)](https://crates.io/crates/mdbook) [![License](https://img.shields.io/crates/l/mdbook.svg)](LICENSE)
22

3-
Personal implementation of Gitbook in Rust
3+
mdBook is a utility to create modern online books from markdown files.
44

55
**This project is still in it's early days.**
66
For more information about what is left on my to-do list, check the issue tracker
77

88

9-
## Example
9+
## What does it look like?
1010

11-
To have an idea of what a rendered book looks like,take a look at the [**Documentation**](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/). It is rendered by the latest version of mdBook.
11+
The [**Documentation**](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/) for mdBook has been written in markdown and is using mdBook to generate the online book-like website you can read. The documentation uses the latest version on github and showcases the available features.
1212

1313
## Installation
1414

15+
There are 2 ways to install mdBook but both require [Rust and Cargo](https://www.rust-lang.org/) to be installed.
16+
17+
##### Install from Crates.io
18+
19+
Once you have installed Rust, type the following in the terminal:
1520
```
1621
cargo install mdbook
1722
```
1823

19-
If you want to regenerate the css (stylesheet), clone the git repo locally and make sure that you installed `stylus` and `nib` from `npm` because it is used to compile the stylesheets
24+
This will download and compile mdBook for you, the only thing you that will be left to do is add the Cargo bin directory to your path.
25+
26+
##### Install from git
27+
28+
The version published to Crates.io will ever so slightly be behind the version hosted here on Github. If you need the latest version you can build the git version of mdBook yourself. Cargo makes this ***super easy***!
2029

21-
Install [node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/)
30+
First, clone the repository on your computer:
2231

2332
```
24-
npm install -g stylus nib
33+
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/azerupi/mdBook.git
2534
```
2635

27-
Then build with the `regenerate-css` feature:
36+
Then `cd` into the directory and run:
2837

2938
```
30-
cargo build --release --features="regenerate-css"
39+
cargo build --release
3140
```
3241

33-
## Structure
42+
The executable will be in `./target/release/mdbook`.
3443

35-
There are two main parts of this project:
3644

37-
- **The library:** The crate is structured so that all the code that actually does something is part of the library. You could therefore easily hook mdbook into your existing project, extend it's functionality by wrapping it in some other code, etc.
38-
- **The binary:** Is just a wrapper around the library functionality providing a nice and easy command line interface.
3945

40-
### Command line interface
46+
## Usage
4147

42-
#### init
48+
mdBook will primaraly be used as a command line tool, even though it exposes all it's functionality as a Rust crate for integration in other projects.
4349

44-
If you run `mdbook init` in a directory, it will create a couple of folders and files you can start with.
45-
This is the strucutre it creates at the moment:
46-
```
47-
book-test/
48-
├── book
49-
└── src
50-
├── chapter_1.md
51-
└── SUMMARY.md
52-
```
53-
`book` and `src` are both directories. `src` contains the markdown files that will be used to render the ouput to the `book` directory.
50+
Here are the main commands you will want to run, for a more exhaustive explanation, check out the [documentation](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/).
51+
52+
- `mdbook init`
5453

55-
Please, take a look at the [**Documentation**](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/cli/init.html) for more information.
54+
The init command will create a directory with the minimal boilerplate to start with.
5655

57-
#### build
56+
```
57+
book-test/
58+
├── book
59+
└── src
60+
├── chapter_1.md
61+
└── SUMMARY.md
62+
```
5863
59-
Use `mdbook build` in the directory to render the book. You can find more information in the [**Documentation**](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/cli/build.html)
64+
`book` and `src` are both directories. `src` contains the markdown files that will be used to render the ouput to the `book` directory.
65+
66+
Please, take a look at the [**Documentation**](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/cli/init.html) for more information and some neat tricks.
67+
68+
- `mdbook build`
69+
70+
This is the command you will run to render your book, it reads the `SUMMARY.md` file to understand the structure of your book, takes the markdown files in the source directory as input and outputs static html pages that you can upload to a server.
71+
72+
- `mdbook watch`
73+
74+
When you run this command, mdbook will watch your markdown files to rebuild the book on every change. This avoids having to come back to the terminal to type `mdbook build` over and over again.
6075
6176
### As a library
6277
63-
Aside from the command line interface, this crate can also be used as a library. This means that you could integrate it in an existing project, like a webapp for example. Since the command line interface is just a wrapper around the library functionality, when you use this crate as a library you have full access to all the functionality of the command line interface with and easy to use API and more!
78+
Aside from the command line interface, this crate can also be used as a library. This means that you could integrate it in an existing project, like a web-app for example. Since the command line interface is just a wrapper around the library functionality, when you use this crate as a library you have full access to all the functionality of the command line interface with and easy to use API and more!
6479
65-
See the [**Documentation**](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/lib/lib.html) and the [**API docs**](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/mdbook/index.html) for more information.
80+
See the [Documentation](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/lib/lib.html) and the [API docs](http://azerupi.github.io/mdBook/mdbook/index.html) for more information.
6681
6782
## Contributions
6883
69-
Contributions are highly apreciated. Here are some ideas:
84+
Contributions are highly appreciated and encouraged! Don't hesitate to participate to discussions in the issues, propose new features and ask for help.
85+
86+
People who are not familiar with the code can look at [issues that are tagged **easy**](https://github.com/azerupi/mdBook/labels/Easy). A lot of issues are also related to web development, so people that are not comfortable with Rust can also participate! :wink:
7087
71-
- **Create new renderers**, at the moment I have only created a renderer that uses [handlebars](https://github.com/sunng87/handlebars-rust), [pulldown-cmark](https://github.com/google/pulldown-cmark) and renders to html. But you could create a renderer that uses another template engine, markdown parser or even outputs to another format like pdf.
72-
- **Add tests** I have not much experience in writing tests, all help to write meaningful tests is thus very welcome
73-
- **write documentation** documentation can always be improved
74-
- **Smaller tasks** I try to add a lot of the remaining tasks on the issue tracker with the label: [`Enhancement`](https://github.com/azerupi/mdBook/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3AEnhancement). Just pick one that looks interesting. The majority of the tasks are small enough to be tackled by people who are unfamiliar with the project.
88+
You can pick any issue you want to work on. Usually it's a good idea to ask if someone is already working on it and if not to claim the issue.
7589
76-
If you have an idea for improvement, create a new issue. Or a pull request if you can :)
7790
7891
## License
7992

0 commit comments

Comments
 (0)