If you want to use Crowbook for your book, this configuration file is all you'll have to add, beside the Markdown files containing the text of your book.
The format is not very complicated. This is an example of it:
# metadata
author: Joan Doe
title: Some book
lang: en
output: [html, pdf, epub]
# list of chapters
- preface.md
+ chapter_1.md
+ chapter_2.md
+ chapter_3.md
+ chapter_4.md
- epilogue.md
Basically, it is divided in two parts:
- a list of options, under the form
key: value
, following YAML syntax. - a list of Markdown files.
Lines starting with the #
characters are comments and are discarded.
Sometimes, you only have one Markdown file and might not want to have a separate configuration file.
In this case, you can specify options at the beginning of your Markdown file, using an inline YAML block, separated by two lines containing only ---
:
---
author: Joan Doe
title: Some (short) book
lang: en
output: [html, pdf, epub]
---
# Some (short) book
The book content, formatted in Markdown.
This method only allows to set up options: you can't include a list of chapters in this way, since the only "chapter" that will be included is this Markdown file itself.
You can then use
crowbook -s some_book.md
to generate output formats from this Markdown file.
By default (unless
input.yaml_blocks
is set to true), Crowboook will only read those inline blocks when it is run withcrowbook --single
(orcrowbook -s
).
There are various options to include a Markdown file.
+ file_name.md
includes a numbered chapter.- file_name.md
includes an unnumbered chapter.! file_name.md
includes a chapter whose title won't be displayed (except in the table of contents); this is useful for e.g. including a copyright at the beginning or the book, or for short stories where there is only one chapter.42. file_name.md
specifies the number for a chapter.@
includes a part instead of a chapter.
So a typical usage might look like this:
! copyright.md
- preface.md
0. chapter_0.md # We want to start at chapter 0 instead of 1
# Next chapters can be numbered automatically
+ chapter_1.md
+ chapter_2.md
...
There are two important things to note:
- you must not use quotes around the file names.
- the paths of these files are relative to the directory where your configuration file is.
This means you can run
crowbook books/my_trilogy/first_book/config.book
without being in the book's directory.
Also note that you don't have to specify a title. This is because the title of the chapter is inferred from the Markdown document. To go back to our previous example:
+ chapter_1.md
does not specify a chapter title, because it will read it directly in chapter_1.md
, e.g.:
# The day I was born #
...
Ideally, you should have one and only one level-one header (i.e. chapter title) in each Markdown file. If you have more than one, it might mess with the table of contents in some cases (e.g. for EPUB).
Parts are included using the @
character, followed by the same characters than for chapters:
@+ numbered_part.md
+ chapter_01.md
+ chapter_02.md
@- unnumbered_part.md
+ chapter_03.md
+ chapter_04.md
@42. part_with_number_42.md
+ chapter_05.md
However, you usually don't really want to have a content directly below the part, only chapters (though it can be useful to add an introduction before the first chapter of this part), so there is also a more straightforward way to use parts, using only the @
character followed by the (markdown-formatted) title of this part:
@ Beginning
+ chapter_01.md
+ chapter_02.md
@ Middle
+ chapter_03.md
+ chapter_04.md
@ Appendix
- notes.md
With this shortcut, parts are always numbered.
If you write your book to be rendered by crowbook
, it is better to have one Markdown file per chapter.
It is, however, possible to work with divisions at lower levels.
In order to properly include these files, you can use the following syntax:
-- section.md
--- subsection.md
---- subsubsection.md
Note that there isn't different syntax for numbered or unnumbered sections/subsections: you can only change the numbering scheme at the chapter level.
When including those files, Crowbook will include them in the table of content as part of the previous chapter (or section for subsections, and so on).
It will also adjust the header levels of the Markdown files, so, in the previous example, a level-1 header in section.md
will be displayed as a level-2 header in the book, and a level-1 header in subsection.md
as a level-3 header.
This can cause issues as only six levels of headers are supported; hence, if you include a level-5 header in
subsubsection.md
, it will cause an error.
The first part of the configuration file is dedicated to pass options to Crowbook.
This is
YAML syntax,
so each line should be of the form key: value
.
Note that in most cases you don't have to put string in quotes, e.g.:
title: My title
It is however possible (and sometimes necessary) to escape some characters using quotes around strings:
title: "My: title!"
It is possible to use multiline strings with >-
and then indenting the lines that are part of the string:
title: >-
A
long
title
author: Joan Doe
will set title
to "A long title"
.
See
block literals in YAML
for more information on the various way to insert multiline strings (which mostly change the way newlines will or won't be inserted).
A final note on the syntax:
all options must be set before the first chapter inclusion (that is, a line beginning with +
, -
, x.
(where x
is a number) or !
).
Metadata are data about the book.
Except for cover
, which points to an image file, all its fields are strings.
The main metadata are:
author
title
subtitle
lang
, the language of the book. The unicode language code should be used, e.g.en_GB
oren
,fr_FR
, orfr
...cover
, a path to an image file for the cover of the book (not displayed in all output formats).
There are also additional metadata:
subject
description
license
version
date
You can define your own metadata by starting an option name with metadata.foo
.
All metadata are accessible from templates, see Templates.
The special import
option allows you to include the options of another book configuration file.
E.g., assuming that you want some common options to be applied to both foo.book
and bar.book
, you can create a common.book
file:
author: Joan Doe
lang: en
license: "Copyright (C) Joan Doe. All rights reserved."
html.header: "[Joan Doe's website](http://joan-doe.com)"
tex.template: my_template.tex
You can then include this file in foo.book
:
import: common.book
title: Foo
+ foo_01.md
+ foo_02.md
Or include it in bar.book
, but override some of its features:
import: common.book
title: Bar
license: CC-BY-SA # Override the license from common.book
+ bar_01.md
These options specify which files to generate.
Note that all file paths are relative to the directory where the configuration file is, not to the one where you run crowbook
.
So if you set:
output.epub: foo.epub
and run
$ crowbook some/dir/config.book
foo.epub
will be generated in some/dir
, not in your current directory.
Crowbook will try to generate each of the output.xxx
files that are specified.
That means that you'll have to set at least one of those if you want a call to
$ crowbook my.book
to generate anything.
(It's still possible to generate a specific format, and only this one, by using the --to
and --output
argument on the command line).
Note that some formats depend on some commands being installed on your system.
Most notably, Crowbook depends on LaTeX (xelatex
by default, though you can specify another command to use with tex.command
) to generate a PDF file, so PDF rendering won't work if it is not installed on your system.
Crowbook also uses the zip
command to generate the EPUB and ODT files.
Current output options are:
output.html
: renders a standalone HTML file.output.html.dir
: renders a HTML directory with one page by chapter.output.epub
: renders an EPUB file.output.tex
: renders a LaTeX file.output.pdf
: renders a PDF file (usingtex.command
).
Setting output file names manually can be a bit tedious, and is not always necessary.
You can also specify a list of output formats with the output
option:
output: [pdf, epub, html]
This is similar to the alternative syntax for YAML list:
output:
- pdf
- epub
- html
This option will set default output path for PDF, EPUB and HTML according to the book configuration file name.
So, if your book is my_book.book
(or my_book.md
), it will generate my_book.pdf
, my_book.html
and my_book.epub
.
You can also infer the output file name by specifying "auto" to e.g.
output.html
. The previous example is thus equivalent tooutput.pdf: auto output.epub: auto output.html: auto
Additionally, the output.base_path
option allows you to set where the output files will be written (relatively to the book configuration file).
E.g.,
output.base_path: docs/book
output.epub: book.epub
will render the EPUB file in docs/book/book.epub
.
Crowbook does its best to improve the typography of your text. Default settings should be good enough for most usages, but you can enable/disable specific options:
input.clean
(default:true
): if set tofalse
, will disable all typographic "cleaning". The algorithm is dependent on the language, though currently there is only a variant implemented forfr
(french), dealing with the specific non-breaking spaces rules for this language.input.clean.smart_quotes
(default:true
): if set tofalse
, disable the "smart quote" feature, that (tries to) replace straight quotes with curly ones. As it is an heuristics and can't be perfect, you might want to disable it in some circumstances.input.clean.ligature_dashes
(default:false
): if set totrue
, will convert--
to en dash (–
) and---
to em dash (—
). This can be useful if you want to use these characters but can't access them easily on your keymap; however, as it can also cause problems if you do want to have two successive dashes, it is disabled by default.input.clean.ligature_guillemets
(default:false
): is a similar feature for french 'guillemets', replacing<<
and>>
to«
and»
.
These options allow to configure the rendering; they are used (or at least should be) for all formats.
rendering.highlight
(default:syntect
): specify if and how to perform syntax highlighting for code blocks. Valid values are:syntect
: uses the syntect library to perform syntax highlighting. This has the advantage of also enabling syntax highlighting for LaTeX/PDF and EPUB formats; however syntect support doesn't seem to work on Windows.highlight.js
: this will use (and embed)highlight.js
for HTML rendering, and will not perform any syntax highlighting for other output formats.none
: disable syntax highlighting.
If your version of crowbook
(as is the case for Windows builds) isn't built with syntect
support, it will default to none
if you try to use it.
rendering.highlight.theme
: only used ifrendering.highlight
is set tosyntect
, selects the theme to use for syntax highlighting. Default is "InspiredGitHub". Valid theme names are:- "InspiredGitHub"
- "Solarized (dark)"
- "Solarized (light)"
- "base16-eighties.dark"
- "base16-mocha.dark"
- "base16-ocean.dark"
- and "base16-ocean.light".
rendering.num_depth
: an integer that represents the maximum level of numbering for your book. E.g.,1
will only number chapters, while2
will number chapters, sections, but not anything below that.6
is the maximum level and turns numbering on for all headers. (Default is1
.) This also affects what levels will be displayed in the table of contents.rendering.chapter
andrendering.part
: the strings that will be used to design chapter and part. E.g., if you want your parts to show as "Book III" instead of "Part III", you can setrendering.part: Book
.rendering.part.roman_numerals
andrendering.chapter.roman_numerals
: these two booleans allow you to specify if you want roman numerals for part or chapter numbers (default istrue
for part numbers, andfalse
for chapter numbers).rendering.inline_toc
: if set to true, Crowbook will include a table of contents at the beginning of the document.rendering.inline_toc.name
: the name of this table of contents as it should be displayed in the document.rendering.initials
: if set to true, Crowbook will use initials, or "lettrines", displaying the first letter of each chapter bigger than the others.rendering.part.reset_counter
: set it tofalse
if you don't want your chapter numbers to start again at 1 at each part.
These options allow you to customize the HTML rendering (used both by the default HTML standalone renderer and the HTML multifile renderer):
html.icon
: allows to set afavicon
for the page.html.header
andhtml.footer
: allow to set a custom (Markdown) string at the top and at the bottom of the HTML page. This is actually a template, so you can access metadata, such as{{{author}}}
,{{{title}}}
, or{{{version}}}
in it. See the template chapter for more information on the fields you can use.html.css
: allows to set up a custom CSS file. You can also redefine the colors in a file and set it usinghtml.css.colors
.html.css.add
: allows you to add some specific lines of CSS in your book configuration file, that will be appended after the default CSS template.html.highlight.theme
: is similar torendering.highlight.theme
but only sets the theme for HTML output.
There are a few options specific to the standalone HTML renderer (default, set with output.html
):
html.standalone.one_chapter
: if set to true, will only display one chapter at a time (using Javascript), making it look similarly to the multifile HTML.html.standalone.template
: allows you to change or modify the HTML template for standalone HTML.
These options allow you to customize the LaTeX renderer (and, thus, the generated PDF documents):
tex.template
: specifies a different LaTeX template.tex.class
: changes the LaTeX class used.tex.paper.size
andtex.font.size
: (defaulta5paper
and10pt
) allows to modify the page and font size.tex.margin.left
,tex.margin.right
,tex.margin.top
andtex.margin.bottom
: specify the margin of the page.tex.links_as_footnotes
: can be set tofalse
if you don't want links to also appear as footnotes (which means losing them if it is actually printed).tex.highlight.theme
: similar torendering.highlight.theme
, but only sets the theme for LaTeX/PDF rendering.
There are also options specific to the EPUB format:
epub.version
: can be set to 2 or 3 (default 2).epub.css
: can be useful if you want to specify a customized stylesheet.epub.highlight.theme
: similar torendering.highlight.theme
but only sets a theme for EPUB output.
These options allow to embed additional files for some formats (currently, only EPUB). This can be useful for embedding fonts.
A list of files or directories that should be added.
resources.files: [font1.otf, font2.otf]
It is also possible to specify a directory (or multiple directories).
So if you have a fonts
directories containing font1.otf
and font2.otf
,
resources.files: [fonts]
will be equivalent to:
resources.files: [fonts/font1.otf, fonts/font2.otf]
default: not set
This option determine where (in which directory), in the resulting document, those files will be copied.
The default is data
, so by default the resources.files
in the first example above will search font1.otf
and font2.otf
in the same directory than the .book
file, and will copy them to data/font1.otf
and data/font2.otf
in the EPUB file.
This is therefore this last path that you should use if you want to access those files e.g. in a custom CSS stylesheet.
Note that if you pass directories to resources.files
, the whole directory would be copied.
So assuming fonts/
contains font1.otf
and font2.otf
resources.files: [fonts]
resources.path: data
will copy these two files to data/fonts/font1.otf
and data/fonts/font2.otf
(and not data/font1.otf
and data/font2.otf
).
Similarly, the whole path of resources.files
is copied, so
resources.files: [fonts/font1.otf, fonts/font2.otf]
will yield the same result.
default: data
Here is the complete list of options.
You can always look at it by running crowbook --list-options
or crowbook -l
.
Note that these options have a type, which in most case should be pretty straightforward (a boolean can be true
or false
, an integer must be composed by a number, a string is, well, any string (note that you might need to use quotes if it includes some characters that may lead the YAML parser to read it as an array, an integer or a list), and a list of strings is a list containing only strings, see
YAML syntax).
The path
type might puzzle you a bit, but it's equivalent to a string, except Crowbook will consider it relatively to the book file. The template path
type is just the path
of a template. Metadata are just strings.
- type: metadata
- default value:
""
- Author of the book
- type: metadata
- default value:
""
- Title of the book
- type: metadata
- default value:
en
- Language of the book
- type: metadata
- default value:
not set
- Subject of the book (used for EPUB metadata)
- type: metadata
- default value:
not set
- Description of the book (used for EPUB metadata)
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Path to the cover of the book
- type: metadata
- default value:
not set
- Subtitle of the book
- type: metadata
- default value:
not set
- License of the book. This information will be displayed on PDF documents
- type: metadata
- default value:
not set
- Version of the book
- type: metadata
- default value:
not set
- Date the book was revised
- type: list of strings
- default value:
not set
- Specify a list of output formats to render
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output file name for EPUB rendering
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output file name for HTML rendering
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output directory name for HTML rendering
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output file name for LaTeX rendering
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output file name for PDF rendering
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output file name for HTML (interactive fiction) rendering
- type: path
- default value:
""
- Directory where those output files will we written
- type: string
- default value:
syntect
- If/how highlight code blocks. Possible values: "syntect" (default, performed at runtime), "highlight.js" (HTML-only, uses Javascript), "none"
- type: string
- default value:
InspiredGitHub
- Theme for syntax highlighting (if rendering.highlight is set to 'syntect')
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- Use initials ('lettrines') for first letter of a chapter (experimental)
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- Display a table of content in the document
- type: string
- default value:
"{{{loc_toc}}}"
- Name of the table of contents if it is displayed in document
- type: integer
- default value:
1
- The maximum heading levels that should be numbered (0: no numbering, 1: only chapters, ..., 6: all)
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- How to call chapters
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- How to call parts (or 'books', 'episodes', ...
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If set to true, display chapter number with roman numerals
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- If set to true, display part number with roman numerals
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- If set to true, reset chapter number at each part
- type: string
- default value:
"{{{number}}}. {{{chapter_title}}}"
- Naming scheme of chapters, for TOC
- type: string
- default value:
"{{{number}}}. {{{part_title}}}"
- Naming scheme of parts, for TOC
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Import another book configuration file
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Path to an icon to be used for the HTML files(s)
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- If set, set theme for syntax highlighting for HTML output (syntect only)
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Custom header to display at the beginning of html file(s)
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Custom footer to display at the end of HTML file(s)
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a stylesheet for HTML rendering
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Some inline CSS added to the stylesheet template
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a stylesheet for the colors for HTML
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a javascript file
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a media print stylesheet for HTML rendering
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Set another highlight.js version than the bundled one
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Set another highlight.js CSS theme than the default one
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- Display footnotes as side notes in HTML/Epub (experimental)
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Replace unicode non breaking spaces with HTML entities and CSS
- type: string
- default value:
"<h1 id = 'link-{{{link}}}'>{{#has_number}}<span class = 'chapter-header'>{{{header}}} {{{number}}}</span>{{#has_title}}<br />{{/has_title}}{{/has_number}}{{{title}}}</h1>"
- Inline template for HTML chapter formatting
- type: string
- default value:
"<h2 class = 'part'>{{{header}}} {{{number}}}</h2> <h1 id = 'link-{{{link}}}' class = 'part'>{{{title}}}</h1>"
- Inline template for HTML part formatting
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of an HTML template for standalone HTML
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- Display only one chapter at a time (with a button to display all)
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a javascript file
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a HTML template for multifile HTML
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a javascript file
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Javascript code that will be run at the beginning of each segment
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Javascript code that will be run at the end of each segment
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Javascript code that will be run at the beginning of a 'game'
- type: integer
- default value:
2
- EPUB version to generate (2 or 3)
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- If set, set theme for syntax highlighting for EPUB output (syntect only)
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a stylesheet for EPUB
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Inline CSS added to the EPUB stylesheet template
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of an xhtml template for each chapter
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Add 'Title' and (if set) 'Cover' in the EPUB table of contents
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Replace unicode non breaking spaces with HTML entities and CSS
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- If set, set theme for syntax highlighting for LaTeX/PDF output (syntect only)
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Add foontotes to URL of links so they are readable when printed
- type: string
- default value:
xelatex
- LaTeX command to use for generating PDF
- type: template path
- default value:
not set
- Path of a LaTeX template file
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Inline code added in the LaTeX template
- type: string
- default value:
book
- LaTeX class to use
- type: string
- default value:
a5paper
- Specifies the size of the page.
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Specifies left margin (note that with book class left and right margins are reversed for odd pages, thus the default value is 1.5cm for book class and 2cm else)
- type: string
- default value:
not set
- Specifies right margin(note that with book class left and right margins are reversed for odd pages, thus the default value is 2.5cm for book class and 2cm else)
- type: string
- default value:
"2cm"
- Specifies top margin
- type: string
- default value:
"1.5cm"
- Specifies left margin
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- If true, generate a title with \maketitle
- type: integer
- default value:
not set
- Specify latex font size (in pt, 10 (default), 11, or 12 are accepted)
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- If disabled, don't try to find references inside the document
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If set to true, use 'stdpage' package to format a manuscript according to standards
- type: list of strings
- default value:
not set
- Whitespace-separated list of files to embed in e.g. EPUB file; useful for including e.g. fonts
- type: path
- default value:
data
- Paths where additional resources should be copied in the EPUB file or HTML directory
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Path where to find resources (in the source tree). By default, links and images are relative to the Markdown file. If this is set, it will be to this path.
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Set base path but only for links. Useless if resources.base_path is set
- type: path
- default value:
.
- Set base path but only for images. Useless if resources.base_path is set
- type: path
- default value:
.
- Set base path but only for additional files. Useless if resources.base_path is set.
- type: path
- default value:
.
- Set base path but only for templates files. Useless if resources.base_path is set
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Toggle typographic cleaning of input markdown according to lang
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- If enabled, tries to replace vertical quotations marks to curly ones
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If enabled, replaces '--' to en dash ('–') and '---' to em dash ('—')
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If enabled, replaces '<<' and '>>' to french "guillemets" ('«' and '»')
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- Enable inline YAML blocks to override options set in config file
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Consider HTML blocks as text. This avoids having
<foo>
being considered as HTML and thus ignored.
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If enabled, allow support for superscript and subscript using respectively foo^up^ and bar
downsyntax.
- type: path
- default value:
- Path where to create a temporary directory (default: uses result from Rust's std::env::temp_dir())
- type: string
- default value:
zip
- Command to use to zip files (for EPUB/ODT)
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output file name for HTML rendering with proofread features
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output directory name for HTML rendering with proofread features
- type: path
- default value:
not set
- Output file name for PDF rendering with proofread features
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If set to false, will disactivate proofreading even if one of output.proofread.x is present
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If true, try to use language tool server to grammar check the book
- type: integer
- default value:
8081
- Port to connect to languagetool-server
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If true, try to use grammalecte server to grammar check the book
- type: integer
- default value:
8080
- Port to connect to grammalecte server
- type: boolean
- default value:
false
- If set to true, use Caribon to detect repetitions
- type: integer
- default value:
25
- Max distance between two occurrences so it is considered a repetition
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Enable fuzzy string matching
- type: float
- default value:
0.2
- Max threshold of differences to consider two strings a repetition
- type: boolean
- default value:
true
- Ignore proper nouns for repetitions
- type: float
- default value:
2.0
- Threshold to detect a repetition