[SwellJoe]

I'm working on a new book lately, and I've been trying to settle on the right workflow. I've been posting the chapters as blog entries, as I complete them, but editing in WordPress leaves a lot to be desired, and I don't really think HTML is the right authoritative source for a book. I wrote my first book, and a lot of old documentation in SGML DocBook, and then later converted it to XML DocBook...it had many benefits, and with a decent vim setup wasn't too hard to work with, and the output options were super flexible. Final format for publication was a Word doc with extensive templates provided by the publisher.

All of that was a long time ago, though, and there's a lot more flexibility in where a document can start and end up in various other formats. pandoc changes the rules entirely, and markdown seems the most "native" format for pandoc.

In short, I think I need to be working in Markdown. But, this doesn't look like the right tool for me, at all. A subscription service for a text editor just feels wonky. I don't really want anyone else in the workflow until I send it off to an editor or for print publication. And, the idea of paying for a text editor, especially one as limited as this one seems to be (though it has some neat tricks), when there are such good/flexible/powerful/free/open editors, seems bizarre.

I think I just need to find a good set of vim settings for markdown, or give Atom another try.

[cben]

I don't think this editor requires subscription? You can skip login ("not now" or something like that at the bottom), and work with local git repos; I suspect you can also use coax it to work with private remote repos (Book -> Repository Settings... ?) without logging in, but haven't tried.

You won't get GitBook's online services but their build toolchain is fully open, can be run locally.

Aside from being proprietary, this seems a neat local markdown editor with built-in git support. I too would prefer something FOSS and more flexible, esp. for a huge project like a book, but I can see myself recommending this to people.

[delluminatus]

Are you familiar with Ghost, the open-source Markdown-based blogging platform? It might suit what you're looking for.

Also, I haven't written any books, but I wonder if Markdown is the best choice for a canonical format. The syntax is lightweight but also limited. For example, it doesn't support tables, and doesn't differentiate between source code (which should be syntax highlighted) and literal text (which shouldn't). You could define your own extensions, of course, but that breaks the compatibility feature. I think reStructuredText (for example) might be a better choice, although Emacs' Org-mode is my personal favorite document format. I suppose that in the end, whichever's most comfortable for the author to write in is the best.

edit: I should mention that this is in reference to a technical book because I've been thinking about technical writing lately. It just occurred to me that you could be writing the type of book that doesn't need tables or source code, in which case Markdown is probably perfect.

[SwellJoe]

Yes, we support Ghost in Virtualmin. I like it a lot, but I like the huge ecosystem of WordPress (and my higher level of familiarity with it) better.

It is a technical book, but no math. There is table support in some extended versions of Markdown, so that's not a problem. And, I've found syntax highlighting works OK on our website (which is Drupal with a geshi filter setup for Markdown text format posts...it is a little clumsy in that it has to be wrapped in <code></code> tags, but it works well enough that I'd be comfortable using it).

I just started googling WordPress plugins for Markdown. Maybe that'll do the job well enough, and I'll do my editing in vim or Atom.

[r3bl]

I'm currently writing a book in Markdown. Basically, I enjoy using Atom a lot, and I host the book in a private GitHub repository. Once I finish writing it, I'll just make the repository public and license it under Creative Commons. I have heard of GitBook and tried it out before (their web service that is), but I absolutely don't need it.

[steveklabnik]

You might like AsciiDoc: it strikes a nice balance between DocBook and Markdown.