Asciidoctor EPUB3: A native EPUB3 converter for AsciiDoc

Asciidoctor EPUB3 is a set of Asciidoctor extensions for converting AsciiDoc documents directly to the EPUB3 e-book format.

Documentation

Detailed installation and usage instructions can be found on the Asciidoctor Docs site.

Installation

Asciidoctor EPUB3 is published on RubyGems.org. Asciidoctor EPUB3 requires Ruby 2.7 or newer. You can install the published gem using the following command:

$ gem install asciidoctor-epub3

Assuming the gem and its dependencies install properly, verify you can run the asciidoctor-epub3 script:

$ asciidoctor-epub3 -v

If you see the version of Asciidoctor EPUB3 printed, you’re ready to use Asciidoctor EPUB3.

Usage

Converting an AsciiDoc document to EPUB3 is as simple as passing your document to the asciidoctor-epub3 command. This command should be available on your PATH if you installed the asciidoctor-epub3 gem. Otherwise, you can find the command in the bin folder of the project. We also recommend specifying an output directory using the -D option flag.

$ asciidoctor-epub3 -D output path/to/book.adoc

When the script completes, you’ll see the file book.epub appear in the output directory. Open that file with an EPUB3 reader to view the result.

Contributing

In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.

To contribute code, simply fork the project on GitHub, hack away and send a pull request with your proposed changes.

Feel free to use the issue tracker or {uri-discuss}[Asciidoctor mailing list] to provide feedback or suggestions in other ways.

Development

To help develop Asciidoctor EPUB3, or to simply test drive the development version, you need to get the source from GitHub. Follow the instructions below to learn how to clone the source and run it from your local copy.

Retrieve the Source Code

You can retrieve Asciidoctor EPUB3 in one of two ways:

Clone the git repository
Download a zip archive of the repository

Option 1: Fetch Using `git clone`

If you want to clone the git repository, simply copy the {uri-repo}[GitHub repository URL] and pass it to the git clone command:

$ git clone {uri-repo}

Next, change to the project directory:

$ cd asciidoctor-epub3

Option 2: Download the Archive

If you want to download a zip archive, click on the btn:[[cloud download] button on the right-hand side of the repository page on GitHub. Once the download finishes, extract the archive, open a console and change to that directory.

Tip	Instead of working out of the asciidoctor-epub3 directory, you can simply add the absolute path of the bin directory to your `PATH` environment variable.

We’ll leverage the project configuration to install the necessary dependencies.

Prepare RVM (optional step)

If you’re using RVM, we recommend creating a new gemset to work with Asciidoctor EPUB3:

$ rvm use 2.2@asciidoctor-epub3-dev --create

We like RVM because it keeps the dependencies required by various projects isolated.

Install the Dependencies

The dependencies needed to use Asciidoctor EPUB3 are defined in the Gemfile at the root of the project. We can use Bundler to install the dependencies for us.

To check if you have Bundler available, use the bundle command to query the version installed:

$ bundle --version

If it’s not installed, use the gem command to install it.

$ gem install bundler

Then use the bundle command to install the project dependencies:

$ bundle

Note	You need to call `bundle` from the project directory so that it can find the Gemfile.

Build and Install the Gem

Now that the dependencies are installed, you can build and install the gem.

Use the Rake build tool to build and install the gem (into the current RVM gemset or into the system if not using RVM):

$ rake install:local

The build will report that it built the gem into the pkg directory and that it installed the gem.

Once the development version of the gem is installed, you can run Asciidoctor EPUB3 by invoking the asciidoctor-epub3 script:

$ asciidoctor-epub3 -v

If you see the version of Asciidoctor EPUB3 printed to your console, you’re ready to use Asciidoctor EPUB3!

Shortcut: Run the Launch Script Directly

Assuming all the required gems install properly, you can run the asciidoctor-epub3 script directly out of the project folder using either:

$ bin/asciidoctor-epub3 -v

$ bundle exec bin/asciidoctor-epub3 -v

You’re now ready to test drive the development version of Asciidoctor EPUB3!

Jump back to [Getting Started] to learn how to create an AsciiDoc document and convert it to EPUB3.

Fonts

Asciidoctor EPUB3 embeds a set of fonts and font icons. The theme’s fonts are located in the data/fonts directory.

The M+ Outline fonts are used for titles, headings, literal (monospace) text, and annotation numbers. The body text uses Noto Serif. Admonition icons and the end-of-chapter mark are from the Font Awesome icon font. Refer to the NOTICE.adoc file for further information about the fonts.

Planned Features and Work In Progress

See WORKLOG.adoc.

Authors

Asciidoctor EPUB3 was written by Dan Allen and Sarah White of OpenDevise on behalf of the Asciidoctor Project.

Copyright

For the full text of the license, see the LICENSE file. Refer to the NOTICE.adoc file for information about third-party Open Source software in use.