MdBook – a command line tool to create books with Markdown

I am happily experimenting with Typst right now (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;typst.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;typst.app&#x2F;</a> ), which compiles much faster than LaTeX and with a syntax very similar to md, together with nice support for math, figures and advanced settings.

Biggest downside of this tool is inability to render PDF or ePub[1]. This is why we recently switched to Quarto[2]. Typst is also a good alternative, already mentioned in other comments.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rust-lang&#x2F;mdBook&#x2F;issues&#x2F;815">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rust-lang&#x2F;mdBook&#x2F;issues&#x2F;815</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;quarto.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;quarto.org&#x2F;</a>

If you want to create books, Asciidoctor (for PDF&#x2F;ebook) + Antora (to publish them on the web), are the way to go. Not related, just a happy user who used Asciidoc for the last 20 years to maintain product docs.<p>Why? because Asciidoc&#x2F;tor gives you a lot more:<p>- a syntax with callouts, tables, indexes, comments, notes and everything you may need in a book<p>- macro expansion<p>- a ton of complex diagrams via PlantUML (veeery useful!) that you can keep inline<p>- a ton of output formats, including &quot;real&quot; paper books via Docbook.

While we&#x27;re on the topic of MD, what&#x27;s the best system for Markdown-based static blogs these days? With good code highlighting, images, colors, etc.

Related:<p>GitHub Gist: &quot;Document Conversion&quot;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;datacustodian&#x2F;4483fff487a0ef70c7b7604f0106a64e" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;datacustodian&#x2F;4483fff487a0ef70c7b760...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_document_markup_languages" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_document_markup_langua...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pandoc.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pandoc.org&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39164002">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39164002</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciidoc.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciidoc.org&#x2F;</a>

If you have the mdbook-epub plugin, it&#x27;s nice to be able to turn the myriad documentation &quot;books&quot; into actual ebooks that I can read on my kindle.

Moved from MD to LaTeX for documentation. Content maybe shared between two or more documents. Was copying and pasting to fix multiple locations for simple spelling errors. Now there is a single LaTex file to edit for all complete documents.<p>Issue is that the file system layout is more like this:<p>&#x2F;Product A&#x2F;images&#x2F;<p>&#x2F;Product A&#x2F;revision.tex<p>&#x2F;Product A&#x2F;instalwin7.tex<p>&#x2F;Product A&#x2F;instalwin10.tex<p>&#x2F;Product A&#x2F;layout.tex<p>&#x2F;Product B&#x2F;layout.tex<p>&#x2F;Commmon&#x2F;images&#x2F;<p>&#x2F;Common&#x2F;companyinfo.tex<p>&#x2F;Common&#x2F;header.tex<p>&#x2F;Win7&#x2F;images<p>&#x2F;Win7&#x2F;access-cmd.tex<p>&#x2F;Win10&#x2F;images<p>&#x2F;Win10&#x2F;access-cmd.tex<p>Where Product A and Product B layout.tex links all LaTex files needed to build a complete document.

I used it in a project once. It&#x27;s a really nice and easy solution, but quite hard to extend, if the built in features are not enough.

I use `mdbook` to provide free online versions of my ebooks (topics include regular expressions, Linux CLI tools and Vim): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;learnbyexample&#x2F;scripting_course#ebooks">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;learnbyexample&#x2F;scripting_course#ebooks</a><p>I chose `mdbook` over `pandoc` mainly because of themes and search provided by default.

Depending on the content, I would recommend AsciiDoc (and not Markdown) to write a book. Markdown might be a good fit for text-only books like fiction, but AsciiDoc has much more useful formattings for structrured documents like technical or scientific books.

mdBook is my favorite tool for creating on-line docs. I wouldn&#x27;t use it to create a printed book or a PDF, etc., but quick static documentation in HTML it works quite well. It&#x27;s simple and robust and just works; and most of the limitations are due to Markdown rather than to mdBook.<p>If I could wave a wand and extend it in any way I chose, I&#x27;d want the ability to implement macros (or the equivalent) a la TeX, so as to automate doing fancier formatting in HTML.

Does anyone know a tool that would generate links automatically for types (etc) to Docs.rs. We have a library (Burn) and accompanying book where were references types in many places.

Looks nice. I&#x27;ve used MkDocs in the past for <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;baseball-stats.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;baseball-stats.net</a>.

Writing a book using markdown looks very good. I’ll give it a try later if I need it.

What is a &quot;book&quot;? This seems to be a website.

Has anyone here actually written technical books in LaTex and Markdown that can knowledgeably compare them? How do they compare? I’m biased from university towards LaTex but the MD syntax does seem way simpler.

typscript is good