2012Q3 Grant Proposal: Improve WriteAt suite by exporting books to pdf and epub formats

Benefits for the Perl Community

The tools developed as a part of this project could be used to write books and technical documents in pod6 as welll as to make them available for reading on most common devices, easy publishing online and printing.

Deliverables

• improve Perl6::Pod module by exporting to latex (pod6latex)
• improve WriteAt module by exporting pod6 files to pdf and epub books
• extend CPAN package of WriteAt by a template of a simple book with export to html, pdf and epub formats
• Ubuntu packaging of completed WriteAt suite

Project Details

The WriteAt is a free open source suite for book writers. It helps making and preparing books for publishing and printing. WriteAt uses pod6 as markup language.

"Compared to POD, Perl 6's Pod is much more uniform, somewhat more compact, and considerably more expressive." (S26)

The typical WriteAt book template looks like this:

  =TITLE MyBook
  =SUBTITLE My first free book
  =AUTHOR Alex Green
  =DESCRIPTION  Short description of the book
  =begin CHANGES
  Aug 18th 2010(v0.2)[zag]   preface
  
  May 27th 2010(v0.1)[zag]   Initial version
  =end CHANGES
  =CHAPTER Intro
  
  D<Pod> is an easy-to-use markup language with a simple, consistent
  object model underlying the document. Pod can be used for writing language
  documentation, documenting programs and modules, as well as for
  other types of document composition.

As you see it is simple. Because pod6 is extendable, it is possible to split big files into parts:

 =Include src/preface.pod6
 =Include src/basics.pod6

or insert images:

    =Image berries.png

A real book sample, a free book "Everything about Perl 6", can be downloaded from https://github.com/zag/ru-perl6-book.

The current version of WriteAt is 0.02. It supports exporting pod6 books to HTML. WriteAt is located at https://github.com/zag/writeat and the CPAN distribution is avalable from here: http://search.cpan.org/perldoc, also avalable at launchpad.net : https://launchpad.net/~zahatski/+archive/ppa.

Inch-stones

• Latex formatter Perl6::Pod::To::Latex (Perl6::Pod)

  Exports to latex pod6's blocks and formats the code.

• export script for pod6 files - pod6latex (Perl6::Pod)
• make export books files to pdf via latex (WriteAt)
• make export books files to epub (WriteAt)
• add a template of a simple book and GNUmakefile for exporting it to html, pdf and epub formats (WriteAt)
• update Ubuntu ppa package to complete versions of Perl6::Pod and WriteAt modules.

Project Schedule

Working on this grant could start as early as the August 2012, and will take 2 to 3 months to complete. All the resulting source will be added to public repositories.

Completeness Criteria

• Perl6::Pod will be released to CPAN with pod6latex export script
• WriteAt will be released to CPAN with GNUmakefile template with an option of exporting to html, pdf and epub formats.
• Ubuntu ppa packages of the complete WriteAt suite will be published at launchpad.net

Bio

I am a software developer with ten year experience, specializing in collaborative filtering, social data mining and e-commerce environment applications. I am capable of producing clear and accessible documentation for developers, and can communicate proactively with application users.

I am also a member of Minsk.pm and Moscow.pm groups, maintainer of rakudo port for FreeBSD. I write in Perl 5 and Perl 6. My CPAN account: http://search.cpan.org/~zag/ and the github: https://github.com/zag.