Writing a Leanpub converter

Background: I thought I would rather start a discussion here, as opposed to a drips and drabs conversation via Twitter. The experiment started out trying to use the new AbstractConverter interface that Robert Panzer has been writing for AsciidoctorJ. The end goal is to get a converter done that can go Asciidoctor -> Leanpub.

Callouts:

First up is the case of callouts. Leanpub uses it's own source code highlighting based upon Pygments, and as such andy source needs to be converted to the format Leanpub expects. Leanpub does not support callouts, so a plan has to be made to do this. The final format is up for adjustment, but not the main issue. What is of concern is the extraction of callouts from the source code and storing it.

Dan has pointed me to https://t.co/XMAJCuLppm on a previous occasion, but I can only see a hit on the block processor with transform=listing & style=source in my converter. I don't think at this point the substitution code has been hit yet. From AsciidoctorJ I don't think that specific code can be called and even if we could, it relies on calling the syntax-highlighter engine, which is something we don't want for Leanpub.

It looks like I might have to implement the regexes CalloutExtractRx & CalloutExtractRxt in my converter and then run the removals myself. Comments?

Also under which circumstances will the 'line-comment' attribute be set -> https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor/blob/master/lib/asciidoctor/substitutors.rb#L1118

This is the solution I came up (with alternative styles) in Leanpub. Any good?

I think the converter is now in a state where people can have at least a play with it as long as you are happy to build you own asciidoctorj SNAPSHOT and the asciidotcor-leanpub-coverter SNAPSHOT.

It's on Github https://github.com/ysb33r/asciidoctor-leanpub-converter

Thanks for the feedback so far.

The only way I know to generate Leanpub MD, is to either go to the webpage for a book and click the preview, or to invoke it via the REST API. Either way it would end up in the Dropbox share (if that is the way you interact with Leanpub).  I have been thinking of setting up an unpublished example book on Leanpub that can be used purely for testing.

BTW. Do you think this project should be migrated into the asciidoctor organisation on Github?

mojavelinux wrote

>
> BTW. Do you think this project should be migrated into the asciidoctor
> organisation on Github?

By all means. I've given you access to transfer when you think it's the
right time.

Done - https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-leanpub-converter.

mojavelinux wrote

It might be nice to add a sample (or example) directory to the project that
shows how the converter is used. You explain it in the README, but it takes
time to set it up and that's less chance you'll get feedback. Just a
build.gradle file + an AsciiDoc document should do.

Done. Example project is at https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-leanpub-converter/tree/master/example.

The exmaple published book is at https://leanpub.com/asciidoctortoleanpubsample.

(Unfortunately I have not yet worked out how to give more than one person or entity on Leanpub the ability to publish using multiple keys, so for now I am the only one who can push updates through to Leanpub. Howver I'll ebdeavour to do that as musch as possible if PRs come in)