md2ms

Convert Markdown file(s) to Shunn's Standard Manuscript Format in docx format.

This is a work-in-progress and is not yet ready for general use. It is being developed for my own use, to generate manuscripts for submission to publishers based on the contents of an Obsidian vault.

TODO

• Subcommands?
  • compile
  • Obsidian
  • wordcount
• Footnotes?
• Dynamically position the title/byline in the center of the page, based on the # of lines in the header. Something like 47 lines per page, minus header lines, divided by two.
• Ponder the idea of generating multiple manuscripts per execution, like:
  • Classic vs. Modern Manuscript format (also add a CLI flag/config)
  • Times New Roman and Courier
  • Anonymous and PII

Obsidian Integration

Plugins needed:

• Shell commands
• Commander

Need to add metadata for the output filename, maybe?

Consider the following structure:

└── Story Name
    ├── Draft
    │   ├── metadata.md
    │   ├── scene1.md
    │   └── scene2.md
    └── Research.md

Either md2ms needs to be aware of structure, so when we run export against Story Name it looks in Draft to find the story and metadata and creates Story Name.docx, or we run the export command against the Draft directory and the folder_name variable is set to Draft and we create Draft.docx, or we explicitly use the title in the metadata to create Story Name.docx (which is how it currently works).

The Obsidian data, in the .obsidian in the root of the vault, contains the JSON configuration and plugins that are installed.

• Will Obsidian try or prompt to install a plugin defined in community-plugins.json but not present in the plugins folder?
  • Otherwise we'll have to install them manually
• Should this be it's own crate, to manipulate a vault's configuration programatically?

What integration should do:

• install plugin(s)
• configure plugins, i.e., for Shell Commands, it should also configure the commands we want to expose
  • but where do we get, for example, the shell command id (7idvy2hg6m)?
    • Maybe we can self-generate them, as long as they're unique
• Create the Writing/ root folder

Configuration Files

I'm considering adding support for a configuration file to set defaults for the CLI. The benefits are that it could shorten the command-line arguments and allow greater/easier customization. On the flip side, this is meant to be opinionated on purpose. By default, it should generate a manuscript that is as close to Shunn's standard format as possible.

I just need to think through how the configuration file should be used and if it's even necessary. I may hold off on a decision until I do some of the Obsidian integration. The only configuration option that might be useful globally or per-user is the output directory, which I haven't even wired up yet.

There are at least four different crates that wrap around clap to provide configuration file support.

1. clap-serde - over 2 years old, MIT licensed.
2. clap-config - 8 months old, MIT licensed. Single struct, any deserializable format.
3. clap-conf - over 3 years old, MIT licensed.
4. clap-config-file - 2 months old, MIT licensed. Single struct, yaml.
5. confy - 1 year old, MIT licensed. Not clap-specific. TOML,YAML, or RON.

Or I can implement serde for the Args struct and parse and load the configuration file myself.

Documentation

Obsidian integration

There's a few paths to take. Two requires subcommands, the other an optional flag. I only plan to add support for integrating with Obsidian, but who knows what might come along. I don't want to have to break the API down the road if someone were to submit a patch for like, EverNote or something.

md2ms obsidian [--install] /path/to/vault
md2ms obsidian --uninstall /path/to/vault

or

md2ms --install-obsidian /path/to/vault
md2ms --uninstall-obsidian /path/to/vault

or

md2ms install obsidian
md2ms uninstall obsidian

I think I've settled with the first example.

PII - Author's Personally Identifiable information

Unless the --anonymous flag is present, the author's PII should be included in the final manuscript. This information is provided in the front matter of a Markdown document.

md2ms compile --pii examples/pii.md examples/novella_with_parts

Anonymous Manuscripts

To strip any PII from your manuscript, use the --anonymous flag.

md2ms compile --anonymous examples/novella_with_parts

Scene Breaks

There are the supported types of scene breaks that are auto-deteected:

• * * *
• \#
• #
• Two or more blank lines

Classic vs. Modern manuscript Format

By default, we will generate manuscripts in Modern format. If you really want classic, you can pass the --classic flag.