Anyone have recommendations on how to write a really structured book? I've been working on a text and I really want each section of chapters to be formatted identically, but also be editable, so that I can edit the chapter definitions, re-publish and merge with content I've already been working on.
Sometimes I go into a tool like Airtable to define content pieces, but there are a lot of pieces.
What I'm looking for is a way to define a chapter/sub-chapter recipe and work on iterative changes to content even as I refine the recipe definitions.
now, I am an old fart. you shouldn't really listen to me, but here it goes: XML and xslt.
I have been using it with SSAX (XML and the scheme programming language, married in harmony) since 2005. It allows for structured documents that can be validated against a doctype in milliseconds and you can output whatever formats you wish.
I made a "documentation" doctype in 2005 and has used that to output documentation in whatever format I wanted (html, plain text, latex, markdown). Sure, it requires you to write XSLT or scheme using SSAX, but at least it will be your own fault whenever the tooling falls short.
my personal website is written XML, and generated server side using guile scheme and SSAX. I have been laughing quietly to myself every time people complain about the shortcomings of whatever markup their static site generator uses. Whenever I have had a need for something else, I can quickly edit my DTD in a backwards compatible way and add whatever sxslt transformations I need.
All that editing of HTML3.2 in notepad.exe made me immune to the ugliness of a light XML markup.
Nice! I think it is not chance that XML and Lisp pair so well. After all, XSLT evolved from DSSSL that was based on a subset of scheme! [1]
I've been using XSLT3 with Saxon-HE [2] + Clojure these days and I'm quite enjoying it. I use RelaxNG for validation (may sprinkle a bit of Schematron in the future).
Another pairing of XML and Lisp that I remember is Qexo [3].
LaTeX is a pretty good fit for this. If you're sticking close to an existing document class, it's very easy to use and will probably look decent without much effort.
However, it can sometimes be very frustrating to get something exactly how you want it. You move this \mbox and it bumps something else, which gets moved into something else, and so on until your desk has an imprint of your head.
Sometimes I go into a tool like Airtable to define content pieces, but there are a lot of pieces.
What I'm looking for is a way to define a chapter/sub-chapter recipe and work on iterative changes to content even as I refine the recipe definitions.