A collection of Markdown files to a Book

Question

I have a set of related markdown files. I would like to create a book like format or html or pdf. I searched and found 3 tools:

1. Pandoc ebook
2. Gitbook
3. Bookdown

What features I am looking for:

• Compatible Chrome/Chromium extensions that can let me copy the contents of website and paste it in the destination format (markdown has this capability)
• I use VS Code, to write my notes in markdown files, I would like support of a build utility to automate the rendering of markdown. As, I keep adding new markdown files on the fly, may be the build utility could generate the updated notebook, say every 15 minutes.
• My notes have more structure that is might have several levels of sub directories, so the build utility should be able to recursively add all the files (the order in which the files should get added can be defined by a number mentioned in the files yaml header).
• Although I don't mind paying for a software, but it would be nice to have the cheapest tools.

If you have used these tools, can you recommend me a suitable tool (please support it with a comparison of pros and cons)?

Answer 1

Personally I would suggest taking a look at Sphinx-Doc which is a python documentation tool that uses ReStructuredText, (with support for Markdown), to produce beautiful documentation in a number of formats, all with cross references, embedded images, etc.:

• HTML Website (searchable)
• HTML Help
• PDF Document
• eBook

Features include:

• Hierarchical structure
• Generation of Table of Contents
• Generation of Index or Indices
• Footnotes
• Glossaries
• External Links
• Code is Syntax Highlighted (for over 80 programming languages).
• Good internationalization.
• Automatic generation on readthedocs.org from GitHub repositories.
• Multiple HTML themes in the default installation & you can customize or download more (even mobile a friendly theme).
• A degree of control over PDF generation.
• Math Rendering (via Extensions).
• Make script could be tied to a macro in VS Code
• All of the tools are:
  • Free (Gratis)
  • Free (Open Source)
  • Cross Platform (Windows/OS-X/Linux/Others)

Built-in themes: