Authoring Book Chapters

Click to rate:
55 votes / avg. rating 0.00%

When authoring a book, you will be provided with an account into a CVS repository. Since all the source files for your book are text files, CVS provides us with a ready-made solution that makes it possible for all the people involved in your project to collaborate freely.

File Structure

Each chapter of the book should be stored in its own directory inside the root of the repository. The directory should be named according to the chapter title, so that it can be easily told apart from the other chapters in the book. For example, if your chapter's title is “Extending Web Services,” the directory could be called extending_web_services. Note that, at this stage, we do not assign a chapter number in any form—this is done automatically by our software when it generates the final PDF of the book, depending on how we order each chapters in the layout phase.

The chapter's source file should be stored inside the directory and given the name chapter.src.txt. This will make it readable to any text editor on your end, while on our end the system will recognize it and compile it.

The chapter's directory can also contain an optional figures sub-directory, which can be used to store figures for the chapter.

You should always use a UTF-8-compliant text editor to create your text files. This will ensure that all special characters are encoded properly for our system to read.

The Title

The title of your chapter should go at the very beginning of the source file. For example, if the chapter's title is “Extending Web Services,” its source file should start as follows:

Listing 1 – Toggle plain text mode – Select listing

=t=Connecting to a MySQL Database=t=
Normal text starts here.

As you can see, Ceres uses special tags to indicate the beginning and end of each element. For example, the =t= tag is used to indicate the beginning and end of the title.

Note that you cannot have any line breaks inside the title. Also, the title should be followed by an empty line.

CONTINUED >

Tags: [No tags yet]

Add tag(s) (comma separated):

[Tags beta] — [Add New] — [Help]

Tags Help

Tags are keywords associated with a web page that help classifying information. You can find a good explanation here.

To add one or more tags to this page, simply enter them below (separate them with a comma) and hit enter or click on the "Go" button.

New Comment

This form allows you to type in a new comment. Keep in mind the following:

The system accepts input in plain text format. Newlines will be converted to the HTML equivalent, and the system will try to catch most URLs and make them clickable.
Your e-mail address will never be displayed. We will use it only to notify you when new comments are posted to this page.
As a rule, we do not delete comments unless they are offensive, racist, spam or otherwise inappropriate.
Bold fields are required

Your Name:
Your e-mail:
Type this number:
Subject:
Comment:

Comments	New Comment
No comments yet. Why not write up one of your own?

Index