Book Authoring Tool

The gist: build a tool that allows writers to author books and export them in common formats.

This is another project relating to text editing. What can I say? I really like thinking about text editing, and I think it's pretty accessible in terms of the clarity of the data and what's being displayed. Text is also lightweight, which is good for learning the basics of anything.

This would be a desktop or mobile app that allows writers to author their content in a given format and then export the writing to PDF, ePub, HTML, etc.

Specs

  • Create/open a document
  • Document has sections (a.k.a. chapters)
  • Text is edited for a section
  • Support Markdown for keeping it basic to start
  • Shortcuts for creating a new section and jumping between existing sections
  • Document can be saved
  • Document can be exported to a variety of formats
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • ePub (slightly more challenging but an interesting format to understand)

Concepts

  • Content authoring tools
  • Exporting to specific file types
  • Document structuring

Extra Credit

  • Support rich text editing instead of just Markdown

References

  • Storyist
  • Scrivener

See Also