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I agree. I DID write a book! https://howtoopensource.dev/ https://howtoopensource.dev/ My biggest tip is this: Don’t skip getting beta readers. High quality fe
by schneems 2y ago
I agree. I DID write a book! https://howtoopensource.dev/ https://howtoopensource.dev/
My biggest tip is this: Don’t skip getting beta readers. High quality feedback is really hard to come by. I changed my tool chain to add a google form at the end of each chapter and got strong buy in from a handful of people with the finished first draft in a beta state. In the end some bailed but one left amazing feedback resulting in massive structural changes.
The process of writing a book is two things (to me). The most obvious is sharing information. The second, often overlooked, but biggest benefit IMHO is how you will grow and learn the source material even better than you already do. Even if you don’t ever publish it, it’s still worthwhile to putting in the effort to write a book. GLHF.
- Narhem 2y ago[flagged]
- stogot 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoHi there - from your recent comments it sounds as if you might have been going through some difficult experiences. (If I'm misreading you, I apologize—it's not easy to be sure if one is reading these things correctly.) If so, we all send good wishes. At the same time, we can't have accounts posting comments like these on HN—especially comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097195 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097177. I've therefore banned your account for the time being. I just wanted you to know that it's nothing personal, and that if you get to the point where it won't happen again, we'd be happy to unban you in the future.
- UncleOxidant 2y agoWhat kind of software did you use to write your book?
- schneems 2y agoIt was a mix of markdown, liquid, scss and ruby scripts via a Rakefile to tie it together to generate html. I bought a prince XML license for PDF generation. It was a hodgepodge of stuff.
- luv2code 2y agoCheck out https://typst.app/ https://typst.app/ if you're looking to write a book yourself. https://hypermedia.systems/ https://hypermedia.systems/ was written with it.
- tenacious_tuna 2y agoedit: the github page directly includes an example of PDF output, so maybe the site is just out of date. ---- I'm a bit confused; the site claims HTML and PDF outputs are "Coming soon" what export formats are supported? HTML and PDF seem very significant to me, and are how I'd likely share most documents with non-tech inclined people.
- a_gray 2y agoI started using it a few days ago, but I've been under the impression that PDF has been possible in Typst since mid-2023 at least. As of 0.4.0, Typst supports PDF, SVG and PNG outputs. The Typst team seem to be rapidly adding features, but I don't think HTML support is coming soon.
- flokl 2y agoThere is currently work done to support basic HTML support. PDF is supported since day one of the public release in march 2023 (before v0.1). The roadmap mentions tagged PDF which is mainly needed for accessibility.
- larperdoodle 2y agoI'm writing my book in Markdown files in IntelliJ and pushing it to GitHub. Use the tools you know.