nodeconf / oslo

Single-day, single-track Node.js conference in Oslo, Norway
http://oslo.nodeconf.com/
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Writing an Ebook With JavaScript #57

Open vkarpov15 opened 8 years ago

vkarpov15 commented 8 years ago

You can all write JavaScript. Some of you even write JavaScript that writes JavaScript. But what about writing JavaScript that converts JavaScript into an ebook about JavaScript? My recent ebook, The 80/20 Guide to ES2015 Generators, is, in its uncompiled form, a suite of mocha tests with some associated markdown. In this talk, I'll discuss the build system I use to create the ebook: acquit to parse mocha tests into markdown, marked to convert the markdown to HTML with syntax highlighting, and Segment's nightmare library to convert HTML into a neatly formatted PDF ebook about generators.

I'm really passionate about test-driven tech writing: I think writing beautiful and detailed learning materials is an endeavor worthy of the same quality tooling that client-side web apps enjoy. Even if the attendees never end up writing an ebook using mocha tests, they'll learn a lot from seeing how this admittedly unusual undertaking works.