scrivener-htmlbook

A Scrivener 2 compile format, and some scripts to produce HTMLBook for O'Reilly Atlas publishing system.

This is not supported for Scrivener 3+

You can use it with Scrivener v2 and if it works for you, great. From what I can find, absolutely nothing KB and I discussed back when I created this integration was addressed, the compile mechanism appears to be even less suited to customized output, and support’s response to my query was a blowoff pointer to an empty page with a mention of an Scrivener example book they haven’t even updated for Scrivener 3.

As L&L has made abundantly clear that they aren’t interested in supporting use cases that would make their editor sufficient for the entire delivery chain, I’m not going to invest even more time trying to fight this editor to output something we can mangle. What they have is totally capable of managing the entire editing process through delivery, but they clearly have no interested in supporting it.

Further, it's never been more than a one-way output and those limitations make it implausible for updating the book...

Reason for existing

I used these scripts when working on the Learning Puppet book for O'Reilly Media.

My favorite writing tool was Scrivener http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

I created a Scrivener 2 compile format which formats chapter names and id tags correctly. Then I wrote some scripts to process the output from Scrivener compile to make HTMLBook.

Requirements

• Scrivener
• Git

How to Structure the Book in Scrivener

Unfortunately I have to make a large number of assumptions for this to work. Here is what I have come up with.

1. Make all frontmatter, backmatter, and parts as text items at the top level see http://oreillymedia.github.io/HTMLBook/
2. If the book has parts, use a text item at the top level named "Part (something): Part-name" to begin the part
3. All chapters should be folders at the top level

It should look something like this...

I am completely open to patches or suggestions for better approaches.

How to Use

1. Install HTMLBook.plist in ~/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/CompileSettings/
2. Install the remaining scripts anywhere you want
3. Run process.sh with the name of the Scrivener output file from within the target directory

$ cd /where/is/the/htmlbook/repo
$ /usr/local/scrivener-htmlbook/process.sh /scrivenings/MyBook.txt

Future Plans

1. Do git add on new files
2. Call a local atlas build optionally

I am willing to accept suggestions and patches should anyone get more creative than I have been.