(Note: I was going through some old files earlier this week and found a couple of old posts that never made it into the live site. This is one of them. I've done a little bit of polishing around the edges, but this is as much a post for historical interest as is a reflection of the contemporary state of my thought.)
When I decided to publish my novella Knowing Mars, I decided that I wanted to use my existing publication system and that I wanted to automate the process of generating of all the necessary versions that made it possible to keep my original files in sync, without needing to duplicate effort. I decided that the few hours it would take to write a script would both save a lot of time later and make it more likely to maintain the text.
So I have this script that:
- Copies the source files into the publication directory.
- Generates: full html files for every chapter, plain text files for every chapter, a full html edition of the complete text, a plain text edition of the complete text, a minimally styled html edition of the complete text.
- Keeps these editions synchronized.
- Keep the original source files synchronized.
- Ideally provide a tool that would prove useful in the future.
I've included the code of what I came up with in this wiki, at `</code/build-novel>`_, and you can find the full source of tychogaren.com and Critical Futures here. For the full source of theKnowing Mars text consider the gitweb. I would be very grateful for any feedback or input.