Asciidoctor :: Discussion - Re: Single PDF and multiple HTML from same sources

Re: Single PDF and multiple HTML from same sources

Posted by David Jencks on Feb 13, 2020; 5:28pm
URL: https://discuss.asciidoctor.org/Single-PDF-and-multiple-HTML-from-same-sources-tp7640p7641.html

This is pretty much the path I’ve taken with what I’m calling “antora-pdf”, a branch of Guillaume’s asciidoctor-pdf.js. It’s javascript based and highly experimental at this point.

https://github.com/djencks/asciidoctor-pdf.js/tree/antora

Since it’s an Antora extension, it assumes your content is arranged in an Antora layout.

With no extra configuration, it produces one pdf per html page.

With configuration of explicit pdfs to generate, it produces only those.

Typically you’d take your Antora nav files and convert them into “book” documents with basically the xrefs changed to includes.

I do some xref and other link processing, but it might not be complete. Generally inter-page links within the pdf document get transformed into intra-pdf links successfully, and links to pages outside the pdf get transformed into links to the published site URL successfully.

It’s based on paged.js to do the pdf conversion.

I think it’s producing fairly OK results for many documents but there are often severe problems with tables; paged.js’s table pagination looks completely broken to me…. but I’m investigating.

Any feedback would be most welcome. Let me reiterate that although I’ve managed to produce some large manuals with this (e.g. the uyuni-docs manuals) it’s highly experimental and unlikely to produce beautiful results without tweaking.

thanks

David Jencks

On Feb 13, 2020, at 2:05 AM, afrey [via Asciidoctor :: Discussion] <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi!

I have a set of .adoc sources that together make a book (chapters, subsections, etc). I need to generate both HTML and PDF from them, but the output I'm trying to achieve is:
- a single PDF output file
- one HTML file per source .adoc, as I have found that this is the best user experience

Has anyone already achieved that?

If not, I'm considering the following solution:

- implement an include processor to support a syntax like this:
include::xref:<path to subdoc>[]
- this include will be expanded in two different ways depending on the backend:
- for HTML, to "xref:<path to subdoc>[]"
- for PDF, to "include::<path to subdoc>[]"
- this would allow me to write my top-level and chapter documents using the special include::xref: syntax to reference the subsections, which will be transformed in links for HTML and in the actual section content for PDF.
- additionally, the regular cross-document xrefs would also have to be somehow adjusted, using a macro preprocessor, so that the anchors are "globalized" with the document name when I generate the single PDF document.

Do you think I'm on the right path? Also, should this kind of flow be supported in the core?

Best regards,
-- Alex

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