Description:

panovel 0.51

Panovel

Introduction
How does this work?
Installation
Starting a new project
The command line interface
Formating
Configuration
Building the books
List of styles
Filter

Introduction
The purpose of this little project is to make the process of producing a
novel targeting different formats easier and more streamlined.
You just write the book in markdown, a very basic and easy to use markup
language. You don’t need a word processor for this, every editor will
do. Then you just edit the metadata.yaml file with the options you want
to use and execute the script. Voila: You have produced your book as an
eBook and a pdf, ready to be printed! The main advantage of this method
is, that you don’t have to maintain different files for different
formats.
How does this work?
This project is a wrapper around pandoc.
It automates many steps that would be needed to convert the files
manually and provides an example metadata.yaml file for easy
configuration. In addition it provides many filters for pandoc to style
some special elements.
Installation
Prerequisites
Before you can use this template, you need some programs installed on
your computer:


Python 3.6 or higher: You can get python
here.


Pandoc: You can download pandoc
here.


A latex distribution: If you want a pdf in addition to an epub, you
need to install a latex engine. Depending on your operating system,
this are some popular choices:


Windows: MiKTeX. I recommend the
full webinstall. It is very big and takes quite some time, but
you don’t need to install any packages yourself this way.


MacOS: MacTeX


Linux: TeXLive via the package
manager


Additional packages for latex: If you didn’t choose a complete
latex distribution, you may have to install some additional packages
in them. All of these distributions have a package manager you can
use to download the needed packages. This template needs these three
packages:

koma-script
verse
titletoc

Pandoc needs some packages too. You can find the list in pandocs
documentation (depending on the distribution, most or all could be
installed already).


Kindlegen: If you want to convert your book for amazons kindle, you
need this little tool from amazon. You can get it
here.


Installing this script
Now you need to install this script itself. Open the console and enter:
pip3 install panovel

How to open the command prompt on windows: There are many ways to
open the console on windows. Instead of the command prompt, you can use
Powershell, if you like. The ways to access Powershell are mostly the
same. Here are a few examples:

Press the windows key and x. Now the power menu pops open. Select
the command prompt from it.
In the file explorer, enter cmd in the adressbar
In the file explorer shift - right click on a folder and select
Open command window here
In the file explorer click on the file menu item and select Open command prompt. You can even add this command to the menu toolbar
with the right click option menu for more convinient use.

Starting a new project
Panovel can create a project folder for you, which includes anything you
need to get started with your new project. Open the console in the
folder you want to create your new project folder in. Then enter the
following into the console:
panovel your_project_name

Per default, this creates a basic metadata.yaml file. If you need all
available options, you can instead enter:
panovel your_project_name -c

Of course you can always create the full metadata file later, by opening
the console in the project folder and entering:
panovel -c

Structure
All markdown files in the folder are used to create the book. You can
therefor either have your book in just one file or in different files.
All files are joined alphabetically or you can specify the exact
sequence in the metadata file. In addition you can specify the files
containing the front- and backmatter.
The image folder holds all images used, for example the cover for the
epub/mobi file.
The command line interface
Panovel has a small list of additional options available for more
advanced uses. Enter
panovel -h

in the console, to see all options available.
Formating
Usage
Markdown is used to format the book. You can use all functionality
provided by pandocs
markdown. But while
markdown excels at light markup, sometimes you need special formatting.
Poems, epigraphs etc. are good examples. To make formatting these
elements easy, this template comes with an easy to use syntax for many
such elements. Each of this styles comes with one or more filters, which
formats these elements according to the output format.
The syntax is very easy:
~~~{.type .option key=value}
The content that should be styled.
~~~

Types and simple options are preceded by a dot, attributes consist of a
name and a value. These options are separated by a simple space. If the
value of an attribute contains spaces, you need to surround it with
quotation marks.
For example, this is how you would implement a poem:
~~~{.poem author="William Shakespeare" title="Sonnet 18"}
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

| So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
| So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
~~~

You can find a description of all the provided styles
at the end of this documentation.
Some additional Tips
You can use html style comments in your source files. But not inside
other style elements. Such a comment looks like this:
<!-- This is a comment. -->

You can add a curly bracket with “.unnumbered” or “-” inside it at the
end of a heading, to exclude it from the automatic numbering, if you
chose to use that.
# Example Heading{.unnumbered}
# Example Heading{-}

Configuration
You configure how your novel is build through the “metadata.yaml” file.
It consists of fields you enter your data into. Each field starts with
its name and a colon. Your data comes behind the colon. Many fields have
example values - just overwrite them.
Some fields are lists and can take multiple values. List items begin in
the next line, indented and preceded by a dash. Just orientate yourself
on the examples.
Lines beginning with a ‘#’ are comments. They mostly explain what the
field controls. Sometimes the actual field is commented out, which means
it is ignored. That is an easy way to enable a feature. Just remove the
‘#’.
The metadata file should be rather self explanatory. There are only a
couple of things you have to add to make it work:

The title of the book
The author
The path to kindlegen, if you want to convert for kindle

If you have frontmatter and/or backmatter in seperate files, remember to
add the filenames to the corresponding field.
Building the books
On windows you can simply use the provided bat file. Just double click
it and your book is build. Otherwise the script is invoked from the
command line. Just enter:
panovel

For advanced users
panovel accepts command line arguments. These overwrite the
corresponding settings in the metadata.yaml. Just invoke it with the -h
argument to see the options available.
List of styles
Below you find a description of each type provided with the template and
which filter is used to render it. If no filter is given, it is named
like the style. Some styles have options how they should look in the
rendered book. You can change these in the metadata.yaml file.
align
Needs a second qualifier, one of ‘.center’, ‘.right’ or ‘.left’.
Text gets aligned accordingly inside the block.
copyrights
You need your copyrights surrounded by this style to be recognized
properly.
dedication
You need your dedication surrounded by this style to be recognized
properly.
epigraph
Adds an epigraph.
Attributes:

author
The author of the epigraph

new_scene
This style is an exception to all others. To make a new scene, just
enter three ‘*’ on one line surrounded by blank lines. Please note,
that this overrides one default markdown command for a horizontal line.
Just use --- for horizontal lines.
Example:
The last paragraph in the old scene.

* * *

The first paragraph in the new scene.

Render Options:

default
A new scene is marked by blank space
text
A new scene is marked by the text given, defaults to * * *
fleuron
A new scene is marked by an image. You need to provide an image in
the options

noindent
The paragraph is not indented.
poem
Styles the content as a poem. There are three render options for this
style, each just formatting the poem slightly different.
Render Options:

bottom
Title and author are positioned on the bottom right of the poem
one-line
As above, but title and author appear on one line
top
This filter inserts the title at the top of the poem

Options:

altverse
This option indents every other line in a stanza
top
Positions the title on the top, regardless of the render option used
bottom
Positions the title on the bottom, regardless of the render option
used
one-line
Positions author and title in one line on the bottom, regardless of
the render option used
noversewidth
Per default the filter calculates the best position for the poem. If
you don’t want this, use this option

Attributes:

author
The author of the poem
title
The title of the poem
poemlines
Needs a number. Adds a line number every number of lines
versewidth
Needs a line of the poem, used to position the poem. Normally this
is calculated automatically, use this, if you want to set it
manually

quote
Styles the content as a quote. Of course markdown has its own syntax for
quotes. You only need this style, if you want to include an author
and/or a title.
There are three render options for this style, each just formating the
quote slightly different.
Render Options:

bottom
Title and author are positioned on the bottom right of the quote
one-line
As above, but title and author appear on one line
top
This filter inserts the title at the top of the quote

Options:

top
Positions the title on the top, regardless of the render option used
bottom
Positions the title on the bottom, regardless of the render option
used
one-line
Positions author and title in one line on the bottom, regardless of
the render option used

Attributes:

author
The author of the quote
title
The title of the quote

Filter
Here are some additional filters, not used for styling elements.
epub_remove_fm_head
This filter is used for a technical issue. Just keep it active.
header_fleuron
Adds an image beneath each heading. You need to provide an image in the
options.
remove_comments
You can use html comments to annotate your text. This filter removes
this comments from the output.
remove_images
Removes all images from the output.

License

For personal and professional use. You cannot resell or redistribute these repositories in their original state.

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