This document is a quick guide showing the benefits of using the txt2tags tool on the book writing process. Also applicable for other large documents as Guides and Thesis.

1. Preface

I'm the txt2tags[1] author and I wrote two published papers using it: a Regular Expressions book (96 pages) and a Shell Programming Course (108 pages). The writing process was smooth and painless, so I want to share this experience.

A book is a real big work to get done, but it doesn't have to be a complicated process. To write is to organize ideas into text structures like sections, paragraphs and lists. Txt2tags is a tool that makes this task simple and easy.

Writing alone or in a team, with or without version control, technical contents or not, text-only or graphics-enabled. In any case txt2tags can be used as the main tool for the book creation.

There is a book being written right now, using txt2tags.

[1] Txt2tags reads a text file with minimal markup as **bold** and //italic// and converts it to documents like HTML, LaTeX and Adobe PageMaker. More info: http://txt2tags.org.

2. Visual Editors VS Markup

The two common ways of writing a book are to use a Visual Editor (Microsoft Word, Adobe Pagemaker) or a Markup Language (LaTeX, docbook).

In Visual Editors you write and format the contents at the same time. This approach is nice for small texts, but for a 300 pages book, the formatting consume time and distract the writer.

In Markup Languages you write contents and mark it up, so an external program will convert it to the final form. The writer don't mind about formatting, but the process of including <tags></tags> and \more{tags} is error prone and very intrusive, making the contents hard to read on the sources.

Txt2tags also uses the markup schema, but the big difference is that its marks are very minimal, some indeed are almost natural, as using the hyphen for list items. So the writer can focus on contents only and the source remains readable.

3. The Txt2tags Approach

Using txt2tags, the book writing process follow these steps:

1. The author(s) learn the very simple txt2tags markup rules.

2. The author writes the book contents, forgetting about noises like page margin, font face, colors and sizes.

3. The author (or the publisher) open the contents on a graphical text processor that reads HTML (or LaTeX or ...) and conclude the book formatting.

Step 1 is fast, just a few minutes. Step 2 will take months, and step 3 can take days or weeks.

Writing contents is when you will spend more time on the book, so it is really important to make this process a simple, productive and pleasant task.

The following are arguments showing that txt2tags can be used to achieve that.

4. Fast and Furious

Time is the key. Using txt2tags you will experience a very high productivity period because you write contents, not formatting.

• Initial Release Fast
  It is very difficult to start something, but txt2tags has a nice approach to this problem. Just sit and write plain text. When you're done, in a few minutes you can add all the txt2tags marks on the text and the document is ready to be converted and published.

• Fast Snapshot Preview
  No matter which will be the final book format, HTML is the preferred format to use on the writing time. A snapshot of the current book state can be done at any time, converting the sources to an HTML page, so any system with a browser can read it. If you need a printable version, convert the HTML to PDF with the excellent htmldoc tool.

• Book Contents Overview
  To quickly have a global overview of the book contents at any time, just use the txt2tags TOC Only feature. The program shows the current Table of Contents for the book, with the listing of chapters and sections, numbered or not, at any depth.

• Fast Writing
  Txt2tags marks are simple and minimalist, very easy to learn. No names, no options, no parameters. You don't have to stop writing contents to insert marks, they flow together with the text. If you don't remember a specific mark at the moment, forget about it and keep writing. At the end you do a global review on the text and quickly insert the missing marks.

• Fast Conversion
  Even if you have a 500 pages book, the conversion process will take just a moment. It is because txt2tags acts as a filter, converting from one format to another. It does not index, compile, calculate, compress, draw or do any strong processing on the sources. No more library, catalog, schema and DTD nightmares.

5. Organize the Sources in Folders

Txt2tags has a built in command to include external files in any part of a document, at conversion time. It makes possible to split the sources into several files.

• Each chapter in a folder
  You can make a folder for each chapter, storing the sources in a structured tree. Inside the chapter folder, you can even create subfolders to store images, configuration and included files.

• No file conflicts
  Separating chapters, different teams can work in different chapters with no interaction between them. Each team work on its own folder, avoiding file conflicts due concurrent changes.

• Flexible access control
  Files and folders organized, you can implement access control rules, setting up properties and permissions for any file or chapter. Do use the standard system tools to configure the read/write permissions, like the "users and groups" schema.

• Global view of sources
  Structuring the sources also helps to have a global view of the book, using any file browser to quickly know the amount of text and images of any chapter. (Hint: on UNIX, find and du commands)

• Work your chapter, forget the others
  Separating sources into files, you can convert your chapter alone, not needing to wait for the full book processing. Besides faster to convert, the chapter alone can be sent to reviewers or be published alone, as a sample of the full book.

• You separate, txt2tags joins
  When converting, txt2tags will automatically join all the chapters into the final book, no matter how deep or large is the folder tree.

6. Version Control Made Easy

Txt2tags helps the book version control with line based tools (as CVS and Subversion). The sources are plain text, not compiled data.

• Work with short lines
  You can make short lines, breaking them at 72 columns. It will help on the revision control, because it is line based. If the final format needs that a paragraph is composed by a single long line (as PageMaker), txt2tags will join them to you automatically.

• Readable sources
  With very minimal markup, the sources are readable. One can easily see what has changed from one version to another, the marks don't hide or pollute the text.

• Large contents, small sources
  As plain text, you can have a huge amount of contents, with a low disk usage. People can do full checkouts and commits even in slow connections.

• Chapter versioning
  As seen before, the sources can be organized into folders. This makes version control separated by chapter, or even sections of chapters, depending on how granulated you need the versioning.

7. Quality Matters

You can write a book. Or you can write THE book. Txt2tags has nice built in features to increase your work quality.

• Spell Check
  As all txt2tags marks are symbols and not words, you can use any spell checker on the sources. It will take care of the text only, not trying to correct tags.

• Alias Database
  Txt2tags has Pre Processing Filters, where you can define keyword/value pairs. Wherever the keyword is found on the sources, it is expanded to the given value at conversion time. For example, you do use the string URL_GOOGLE on your text and it will appear as http://www.google.com on the book. If the Google URL changes, you just change the filter definition and all occurrences of it will be updated. You can define as many keywords as needed, with no maximum limit.

• Dynamic Content
  Txt2tags also has a command to include pre-formatted text into the document when converting it, for example, a software source code sample. This way you can keep this code sample separated from the book text and update it by hand or even automatically. A nice idea is to mark the software source code with special comments, and a little program extract these marked parts into separate files.

• Control Over the Result
  Txt2tags has Post Processing Filters, where you can define rules that makes adjustments on the resulting document. So if the standard txt2tags conversion does not fully satisfy your needs, you can improve it with your own filters. You can use the power of the Regular Expressions to match patterns.

8. Other Advantages

And there is more!

• Separate Formatting from Contents
  Using HTML as the development target format, you can also use CSS files to experiment different book looks. CSS defines formating for HTML pages, and there is graphical editors to create CSS files. A team of designers can work on doing CSS files for the book, while the writers keep writing.

• Include Complicated Structures
  Txt2tags does have support for all the common structures used in texts: lists, definitions, quotation, verbatim area and tables. But if some parts of your book requires a more complicated structure, you can use the Tagged Include feature, where you insert text that is already tagged, like a real fancy HTML table. With txt2tags, exceptions are not a problem!

• Do Use Any Editor
  As plain text source files, even the most modest text editor in the world can be used to write the book. It doesn't have to have any feature besides write and save text. If you use the editors with txt2tags support, you will have Syntax Highlight, which helps to identify the txt2tags marks. They are: Vim, Emacs, Kate, Nano, gedit and TextMate.

• Technical Support
  Txt2tags has various channels to get technical support: two mailing lists (english and portuguese), an IRC channel and even an Orkut community. And for book projects, your can send direct e-mails to the program author, who will give priority on the answer.

9. No Tool Fits All Needs

There are some special cases where txt2tags is not a good tool for writing books.

• Very Complex Books
  Books that uses lots of complicated tables, formulas or specific structures, needs a graphical editor or a more complex markup language, as LaTeX. If your book matches this description, txt2tags cannot help you.

• Footnotes
  Txt2tags does not have footnotes support. If you will use just a few, you can add them later. But if you plan to make an intense footnotes use, txt2tags cannot help you.

• References for Pages, Tables and Images
  One can use a graphical editor at the publishing time to include indexes for pages, tables and images, no problem at all. But if you plan to refer to them inside the text like "See table 4.11 on page 35", txt2tags cannot help you.

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Writing Books with Txt2tags - Oct/2004 (see source)