This is a starter project for people looking to make a "Learn X The Hard Way"
book. If you want to have a book for your favorite language, and you like the
style of "Learn Python The Hard Way" and "Learn Ruby The Hard Way", then this
kit will get you started quickest for the best results.
I've developed this kit after using various publishing and authoring systems
over the years, and I've found this to be the best for producing high quality
self-published rstt. It uses the latest book building gear I've put together,
and *no longer* requires you to learn LaTeX. You just need to know
reStructuredText which is like a strict markdown (that's a good thing).
Getting Started
===============
First thing to install is dexy:
$ easy_install dexy
Or, using PIP:
$ pip install dexy
If you want to produce output in HTML format, docutils is also required to be
installed:
$ easy_install docutils
Or, using PIP:
$ pip install docutils
If you want to make .mobi books with Calibre go install that:
http://calibre-ebook.com/
If you're on Mac OS X, you'll also need to do this:
http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cli/cli-index.html
Once you have those, try this:
$ dexy setup
$ dexy
This will produce all the gear for dexy, and then build the sample starter book
into output/learn-x-the-hard-way.pdf as well as HTML output for a site.
Edit the Makefile and you can set a server to rsync the files to it for hosting
with:
$ make sync
Setting Up Your Book
====================
You should now probably setup whatever revision control tool you need to use.
If you want to keep using git, then I suggest doing:
$ rm -rf .git
$ git init .
$ git add .
$ git commit -am "first commit"
That will make sure you get a clean git setup that is just for your book. Feel
free to change the above to fit whatever system and workflow you need.
Once you have this setup, you then want to edit the kit to fit your book.
Here's what you need to change:
1. learn-x-the-hard-way.rst -- Rename this to your book's PDF and mobi file name
then edit this to have your exercises included the way I have them.
2. preamble.rst -- Edit the authorshipt stuff for the PDF output.
3. Makefile -- Change the target host for rsyncing it to your server if you use one.
4. template.html -- Change up the name of your own site and various other
things, or put your own HTML look onto it. It currently uses Zurb Foundation
to get started and looks like my books so change it! Don't be lazy!
5. index.rst -- Create links to your exercises.
6. dexy.yaml -- Edit this for the files that you need to include as your source code.
I will write up more but check out my various books for examples.
Make the book again and check the resulting PDF to see your title.
Enabling Calibre Support
========================
You can use Calibre to make a mobi by simply uncommenting the stanzas for it in the
dexy.yaml, and then adding similar |pn lines for the code you have in your other
format outputs. See my png-code stanza in my dexy.yaml for an exmaple.
On OSX you need to do this so dexy finds the tools for the OSX Calibre
install:
export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS
Structure And Initial Content
=============================
Now you can lay down your structure and introduction. Here's what I suggest.
1. Write a quick introduction in the introduction.rst to get your feeling down.
2. Write your preface.rst to give some personal stuff about you, why you're writing.
3. Edit ex0.rst such that it teaches a total nobody how to install the needed gear.
4. Edit ex1.rst such that it teaches a total nobody how to print out a bunch of stuff.
5. Edit next.rst to explain where the student should go after finishing your book.
Once you have this you should have a basic feel for the book, and enough
content to show it to some people. Show it to a few folks and watch them try
your exercises. This will tell you if you've got it simple enough.
Recommended Contents
====================
I recommend for your ex0.rst install instructions you focus on the following:
1. Use just a simple editor like gedit, notepad+, or Textwrangler. NO vim! NO emacs!
2. Do *not* have them use git or other RCS tools. They're here to learn code, not git.
3. Make it work for Windows, OSX, and Linux if you can.
4. The install of your language should not involve tons of steps.
For your introduction, and for the whole rest of the book, remember these
points:
1. Your book should *educate* people, not *indoctrinate* them. If you find
yourself talking constantly about how awesome your language is and how it will
change their life, then you're not educating, you're just making another cult
follower. Leave the decision of whether the language is good to the reader.
2. Read through my Introduction and give advice for learning, especially persistence and
how the book is *supposed* to be hard and tedious at first.
3. Be honest about flaws and problems in your language so the reader is not discouraged
when they encounter them.
4. Lightly make fun of programmers and inoculate your student against religious wars
over syntax, idioms, editors, tools, and anything else that gets in the way of them
learning. Remember, you are writing this book for *them*, not your fellow coder
friends.
5. Make it clear that programmers are not scary geniuses. This goes a long way to
encourage your readers to try to learn as it will reduce their "code anxiety".
Working With Dexy
=================
Dexy is stable and getting close to a 1.0 release so it should be reliable, but
contact the author with any problems you hit or me. What it does is take code
for your exercises and then injects it into your .rst files in a nice pretty
printed format that's publication ready. I've created some handy Jinja macros
under the macros/ork.jinja file (which comes from a small side project I have
called Orkestrix at http://orkestrix.org/).
You use it all like this:
1. Edit the dexy.yaml file and put your language extension in there like I've got.
The syntax is FILENAME_PATTERN|FILTER1|FILTER2, etc. For mine, I'm mostly using
the pyg(pygmentize) filter. For python, it looks like this: .py|pyg|l. .py (or *.py)
is the pattern of files to convert, pyg is the pygmentize filter for highlting code
and "l" is the filter for converting to LaTex. You'll also need another stanza for
the |h code to get HTML, but look at my example to see.
2. Put your code for each exercise in code/ named after each exercise.
3. Look at the ex0.rst that I've written which shows you how to include this code.
4. Finally, if you want to show the output of your programs, there are two ways
to do this. If you want to use dexy, you can create another entry in dexy.yaml
like this: ".py|py|pyg|l". This means, run the code through python (py), then
pass the result to pyg (if you are generating HTML or xml or whatever it will
be highlighted), and finally, pass to the LaTeX filter. The other low
tech way is simply to put the output for each program into code as ex#.txt and
include that as well. ex0.rst has both.
Refer to http://dexy.it for more information on how to use it.
Working With rST
================
If you do wiki markup of any kind then rST is just a more strict
form of that. It handles a greater number of common programmer
needs and actually gives you errors for things that are wrong.
This may be annoying at first but you'll get used to having it
be more strict.
You can read these to find out about rST:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickstart.html
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html
Last Steps
==========
Once you've got your voice and initial setup, I recommend that you go through
and setup all the titles and the big structure of your book. Look at LPTHW to
get a general idea of a good structure. Here it is in a short form:
1. Two sections split at 26 exercises.
2. First half is repetitive interactions with the computer that are immediate, with heavy
focus on functions and no objects, complex data structures, algorithms, or math.
3. Second half is a sudden ramp-up in difficulty that teaches logic, OOP, data structures,
and the more complex things your language features.
4. Focus on simple rstt adventure games as the main kind of program they make. These are
fun, easy to create, immediate, and don't require any special geometry skills or graphics
systems.
The way to think of the book's structure is the first half gets them strong,
the second half gets them skills. In the first half they're just doing
push-ups and sit-ups and getting used to your language's basic syntax and
symbols. In the second half they use this strength and grounding in the
basics to start learning more advanced techniques and concepts, then apply
them to real problems.
I recommend that you create a single rstt file and make a basic outline of all
your chapter titles to get an idea of your structure. Once you've got that
kind of thought out, go through and fill in each of the ex#.rst files with the
titles and a short note on what you plan to teach there. This will turn the
book into an easy to follow TODO list of what to write.
Then, just go through and write each one in order and change later ones as you
go in new directions. Don't be a slave to your structure, but having one helps
keep you motivated and organized.
Publishing Your Book
====================
If you want help publishing or promoting your book, then contact me at
help@learncodethehardway.org.