Awesome
Technical Markdown
A markdown setup for technical documents, reports, theses & papers.
History rewritten: Due to LFS mistakes, main
branch was rewritten and a
reclone of this repository is needed.
Note: A docker
build setup has been implemented! Read more in
here.
Check the Changelog.md
for the latest changes.
Quick Intro
This is a markdown setup demonstrating the power and use of markdown for technical documents:
-
fully automated conversion sequence using
gradle
+pandoc
such that exporting (Content.md) is done in the background:- export to PDF with
pandoc
toxelatex
usinglatexmk
See Output - export to HTML with
pandoc
tohtml
See Output - [todo] export to PDF with
pandoc
tohtml
then tochrome
withpupeteer
- export to PDF with
-
pandoc filters for different AST (abstract syntax tree) conversions:
- own filters with panflute [doc]
- --crosscite [doc] for citing
- pandoc-crossref [doc] for cross referencing
- pandoc-include-files [doc] for file transclusion
-
Full-fledged VS Code setup to write and style your document in one of the best IDEs (nvim is better 😏).
Quick-Start
Execute the following in a shell:
./gradlew -t build-html
This will build the HTML output from its markdown main file.
Demo Project
There is also a demo showing a full thesis project.
Rational
Pandoc is awesome and the founder John MacFarlane develops pandoc in a meticulous and principled style. The documentation is pretty flawless and the community (including him) is really helpful. That is why we rely heavily on pandoc.
-
We target the output formats
html5
andlatex
, because- HTML can be viewed in all browsers and web standards such as CSS3 etc. have become a major advantage and enables ridiculuous dynamic, interactive styling. Collapsable table of contents is just the beginning.
- LaTeX enables to produce high quality output PDF (
xelatex
). Every proper book and distributed PDF is written and set in LaTeX.
-
The orchestration around calling
pandoc
is basically only a file watchergradle
which callspandoc
on file changes. We want as little as possible different tools to achieve the above output formats. That also means we do not want to have lots of pre- and post-processing tasks aside from runningpandoc
. The main goal is, that users can writemarkdown
as a first-party solution with some enhanced features enabled bypandoc
itself. Writting technical documents should become a breeze. -
The common agreement in the industry about using M$ Office for writting technical documentations as demonstrated here, is considered the most complete and utter bullshit you can adhere to. Certainly employees mostly must obey. The common argument is "people need to exchange documents and work on it". experiences, a lot of time and money is spent which gets never debated.
It's about high time to turn into a direction which will likely become the standard. Technical writters should really focus on the content they write and not focus on styling quirks and tricks.
-
Every technical document writter probably knows about source code management (
git
). There you go with proper team work.
Project Layout
The following directories of a single project in src
(e.g.
src/techmd
) are important for the content of the output:
Content.md
: The main markdown document.chapters
: All markdown source included in the main markdown docucment.files
: All additional files referenced in the markdown documents inchapters
.literature
: All bibliography/literature related files (e.g.bibliography.bib
).includes
: Special include files (e.g. MathJax definitions) and other project related build tooling files which act as input files to thepandoc
build process.
The following directories are important for the styling of the output:
-
tools/convert
: The main tools directory containing pandoc related output configs. It acts as pandocsdata-dir
. See env. variables in docker builds.tools/convert/defaults
:pandoc
defaults .tools/convert/includes
:pandoc
templates in for HTML and PDF output settings.tools/convert/css
CSS styling for HTML output.tools/convert/filters
:pandoc
filters in for modifyingpandoc
s abstract syntax tree.tools/convert/scripts
: Some workaround scripts for converting tables based on a config file in
Dependencies
If you have docker
, you should directly open this project in VS Code with the
provided .devcontainer
setup which gives you a hassle free experience. See
Docker Setup for more information. Building on a native system,
you need the following dependencies:
Gradle
For the Gradle build tool you need a working Java runtime. On Linux and macOS you can do:
brew install java
You should not need to install Gradle, since everything is setup by the
checked-in gradlew
Gradle wrapper.
Yarn
So far yarn
is not required on the system and handled by the dependent Gradle
task yarnSetup
. If you experience problems with having the node modules not
correctly setup, use
cd tools
../build/techmd/yarn/bin/yarn install --modules-path build/techmd/node_modules
Pandoc
Install pandoc (>= 2.9.2.1, tested with 2.16.2)
For Linux and macOs:
brew install pandoc pandoc-crossref
For Windows:
choco install pandoc
Python
Install a recent python3
(>= 3.9) and the following packages.
Setup a python environment in .venv
with
python -m venv --system-site-packages ./.venv
and install the packages:
python -m venv --system-site-packages .venv # or simply symlink to an existing one.
source .venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r tools/docker/setup/python.requirements
The VS Code tasks pass the config ${config:python.pythonEnv}
directly as an
argument to gradlew
(if not set python
is the default). The tasks are run in
a shell where ./.venv/bin/activate
has been called. Then, pandoc
will use
the correct python when launching the filters.
You can also use the ignored .envrc file with direnv.
Building and Viewing
Run the following tasks defined in tasks.json from VS Code or use the following shell commands:
-
Show HTML Output: Serves the HTML for preview in a browser with autoreload:
./gradlew -t view-html
-
Convert Markdown -> HTML: Runs the markdown conversion with Pandoc (
html
) continuously:./gradlew -t build-html
- The conversion with pandoc applies the following filters in defaults.
- The HTML output can be inspected in
Content.html
.
-
Convert Markdown -> PDF: Runs the markdown conversion with Pandoc (
latexmk
andxelatex
) continuously:./gradlew -t build-pdf-tex
- The conversion with pandoc applies the following filters in defaults.
- The PDF output can be inspected in
Content.pdf
. - The LaTeX output can be inspected in
build/output-tex/input.tex
.
-
Convert Markdown -> Jira: Runs the markdown conversion to Jira (experimental) with Pandoc continuously:
./gradlew -t build-jira
- The conversion with pandoc applies the following filters in defaults.
- The Jira output can be inspected in
Content.jira
.
Docker Build
We provide 2 images based on pandoc/latex:2.18-alpine
in
gabyxgabyx/technical-markdown:
gabyxgabyx/technical-markdown:latest-minimal
: Minimal docker images including pandoc and all necessary tools to fully build your markdown. It does not include the foldertools
andconvert
and your mounted Git repository needs to contain these as in this repository or by setting the environment variables described below. This is useful if you want to tweak the layout and styling of the document.gabyxgabyx/technical-markdown:latest
: The full-fledged image which is used in this VS Code.devcontainer
setup. It contains its bakedtools
andtools/convert
folders which are used to compile your markdown.
The <version>
above corresponds to either latest
or the Git version tag
minus the v
prefix.
Environment Variables
Numbers refer to the container images above:
Env. Name | Default Value | Description |
---|---|---|
TECHMD_TOOLS_DIR | 1. not set | The tools directory containing all files needed for the conversion. |
2 . /home/techmd/technical-markdown/tools | ||
TECHMD_CONVERT_DIR | 1. not set | The convert directory containing the files needed for the pandoc converstion. |
2 . /home/techmd/technical-markdown/tools/convert | ||
TECHMD_USE_SYSTEM_NODE | 1. true | Use the node installation on the system instead of installing a local one into the build folder |
2. true |
Using the Docker Image
Either copy the .devontainer
to your project (you don't need the tools
folder) and open the project in the VS Code remote container extension.
Alternatively you can always use:
docker run -v "<path-to-your-repo>:/workspace" \
gabyxgabyx/technical-markdown:latest"
./gradlew build-html
Extending the Technical-Markdown Docker Images
If you need special other tools and an other setup which might be useful for the general images above, consider submitting an issue. Otherwise you can always extend the existing images for layout/styling changes with another Dockerfile like:
FROM gabyxgabyx/technical-markdown:latest-minimal as mycustomtechmd
// More Dockerfile commands ...
Building the Technical-Markdown Docker Images
To build the images in this repository for customization use:
tools/docker/build.sh \
--base-name "mycustomimage" \
[--push-base-name "docker.io/superuser"] \
[--push]
Editing Styles
HTML
You can edit the main.less file to change the look of the markdown. Edit the main.less file to see changes in the conversion from Content.md.
LaTeX
The following templates are responsible for the LaTeX output:
- Template.tex : The main template.
- Header.tex : The class, packages and
styles defining the document, included by the main template with
include-in-header
in pandoc-latex.yaml
Pandoc Filters
Pandoc filters are harder to debug. There is an included unix-like
tee.py filter which can be put anywhere into the
filter chain as needed, to see the AST JSON output in the folder
build/pandoc-filter-out
(see dev.py for
adjustments). The filter teeStart.py first
clears all output before doing the same as
tee.py. Uncomment the tee.py
filters in
pandoc-filters.yaml.
Issues
Panflute [done]
Using pandoc >=2.10
we have more types and AST changes in
meaning that also the python library panflute
needs to be supporting this:
- Issue :
Transclude: Relative file paths [done]
So far relative paths are not yet supported in pandoc-include-files.lua
filter.
- Issue :
Table Issues [done]
- Wrong format for
latex
: Issue : -> Update to next version.
Todo
- Add CI.
- Add tests.
- Add prince conversion to PDF.
Support & Donation
When you use Githooks and you would like to say thank you for its development and its future maintenance: I am happy to receive any donation: