merge-chapters-md v1.0.0

merge-chapters-md ·

The problem

You're writing a long markdown document with several chapters and you'd like the following workflow:

• Use a separate .md file for each chapter
• Merge chapters into a single .md file
• Optionaly:
  • Watch the files for changes and merge automatically
  • Add headers
  • Generate the output file in different formats using Pandoc
  • And more

The solution

$ npm install -g merge-chapters-md

A zero-configuration command line program that is made to implememt the workflow described above. Let's see how it works.

Imagine you have the following setup:

~/Documents/Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger/
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
└── ch2
    └── ch2.md

Here's ch1.md:

Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don't you know you might find
A better place to play?

And ch2.md:

And so, Sally can wait
She knows it's too late as we're walking on by

Now, if you run merge-chapters-md in this folder, you'll get the following result:

.
├── Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger.md
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
└── ch2
    └── ch2.md

And the contetns of Don't Look Back in Anger.md are:

# Don't Look Back in Anger


Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don't you know you might find
A better place to play?

And so, Sally can wait
She knows it's too late as we're walking on by

This is shaping out to be a shoo-in hit!

Configuration options

The following flags are available:

-d, --directory                       Specify a custom directory. Defaults to the current directory
-t, --title                           Specify a custom title. Defaults to the name basename of the directory
-f, --finalFolder, --final-folder     Specify where to put the output file. Defaults to the directory
-a, --addHeaders, --add-headers       A boolean flag. If set, adds an H2 header to the beggining of every chapters. The header is the number of the chapter. Defaults to false
-s, --subtitle                         Specify a path to an .md file, the contents of which will be used as a subtitle. Defaults to null
-p, --pandocFromat, --pandoc-format   A comma separated list of pandoc output formats (pdf is not supported). Requires pandoc to be installed and available in your PATH. Defaults to null
-w, --watch                           A boolean flag. If set, watches the directory for changes and merges automatically. Defaults to false
-i, --watchInterval, --watch-interval Specify an interval in ms to wait before merging automatically on change. Defaults to 1000
-c, --config                          Specify a path to a custom config file. It should be a JSON file where keys are any of the flags described above. Note that flags provied directly will override those present in the config file

Usage

merge-chapters-md expects

• the chapter folders and chapter files to end in numbers
• chapter files to have the .md extension

Examples

Once again, here's our setup:

~/Documents/Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger/
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
└── ch2
    └── ch2.md

Title

$ merge-chapters-md -t "Please Do Look Back In Anger"

Output:

.
├── Please\ Do\ Look\ Back\ In\ Anger.md
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
└── ch2
    └── ch2.md

Please Do Look Back In Anger.md:

# Please Do Look Back In Anger


Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don't you know you might find
A better place to play?

And so, Sally can wait
She knows it's too late as we're walking on by

Final folder

$ merge-chapters-md -f output

Output:

.
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
├── ch2
│   └── ch2.md
└── output
    └── Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger.md

Add headers

$ merge-chapters-md -a

Output:

.
├── Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger.md
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
└── ch2
    └── ch2.md

Don't Look Back in Anger.md:

# Don't Look Back in Anger


## 1
Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don't you know you might find
A better place to play?

## 2
And so, Sally can wait
She knows it's too late as we're walking on by

Subtitle

$ merge-chapters-md -s subtitle.md

subtitle.md:

_by Oasis_

Output:

.
├── Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger.md
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
├── ch2
│   └── ch2.md
└── subtitle.md

Don't Look Back in Anger.md:

# Don't Look Back in Anger
_by Oasis_


Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don't you know you might find
A better place to play?

And so, Sally can wait
She knows it's too late as we're walking on by

Pandoc format

$ merge-chapters-md -p html,docx

Output:

.
├── Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger.docx
├── Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger.html
├── Don't\ Look\ Back\ in\ Anger.md
├── ch1
│   └── ch1.md
└── ch2
    └── ch2.md