Editions

Every build writes to dist/<config name>/ under the current folder (dist/book/ for book.json), or to --out <dir>:

File	Built by
<output_name>-<size>.pdf	build pdf
<output_name>-<size>-printed.pdf	build pdf --printed
<output_name>.epub	build epub
web/	build web, serve
QA-REPORT.md, qa-pages/	qa
src/	working files kept for checking

PDF

$ md2book build pdf
$ md2book build pdf --printed

The book at its page size — 170 × 240 mm unless page.size says A5, B5, A4 or Letter — in this order: cover, title page, copyright page, contents with page numbers, then the chapters, with running headers and page numbers. <size> in the file name is the page in millimetres (170x240, 148x210, …). font.size makes all the type smaller or larger together.

• Page 1 is the first page of chapter one. Myanmar books number pages in Myanmar digits (chapter_digits).
• recto_chapter_start: true starts every chapter on a right-hand page.
• The running heads and feet (author, book and chapter titles, page number) follow the book's running layout, mirrored on left and right pages.
• Burmese lines break between syllables, never inside one.
• A section heading never sits alone at the foot of a page; it moves to the next page with its first lines.
• An end_image becomes the last page once the chapter named by end_image_after exists.

Printed edition. --printed writes the print-shop interior, <output_name>-<size>-printed.pdf: no cover page (the title page is page 1), no colour and no dark fills, so code and terminal blocks print cleanly in black and white.

The HTML the PDF is typeset from is kept in src/book-print.html (or src/book-printed.html) for checking.

EPUB

$ md2book build epub

A reflowable EPUB 3 of every chapter, <output_name>.epub, with the book's fonts embedded, the cover, a title and copyright page, and the contents. An end_image is the last document once the chapter named by end_image_after exists. The unpacked files stay in src/epub/.

Web edition

$ md2book build web
$ md2book serve --port 8000

A static site of the chapters listed in web_published_chapters; other chapter files are never read, so unpublished drafts never reach the site. It reads like a real book: it opens from a closed cover, pages turn with a curled sheet, and wide screens show a two-page spread.

Each page carries the same running head and foot as the PDF, set by running.

The site loads nothing from other servers unless the book opts into analytics (Google Analytics, Plausible, GoatCounter or Cloudflare Web Analytics).

Readers get a toolbar with the contents, search, text size, bookmarks and fullscreen, and these keys:

Key	Action
← →	previous and next page
+ -	larger and smaller text (code blocks keep their size)
F	fullscreen

On phones and tablets, a page turns with a swipe left or right anywhere on the book (a slanted thumb swipe counts, and a short flick is enough), or with a tap near the left or right edge of the page, on the text too. The middle of the page, links, buttons and code blocks keep their own taps, text can still be selected, and a pinch-zoomed page pans instead of turning. Turns are a little quicker there than with a mouse. With a mouse or trackpad, the arrows, the page edges and the keys turn the pages as before.

The reading position, bookmarks and text size are remembered in the browser.

The site is written to web/: index.html, one page per chapter in chapters/, 404.html, robots.txt, sitemap.xml (with web_url), and its styles, fonts and images. Upload the folder as it is; it is served from the root of its domain, or from the path of web_url (like a GitHub project site). To publish it on GitHub Pages, see GitHub Pages.

For search engines, every page names md2book as its generator (<meta name="generator" content="md2book">), robots.txt lets crawlers read the whole site, and sitemap.xml lists the home page and every published chapter by its absolute URL; the 404 page is marked noindex and is not listed. A sitemap needs the site's address, so without web_url it is not written and robots.txt does not name it.

Key	Effect
web_url	canonical and share links, the sitemap and the site's path
web_description	the page description (default subtitle, then title)
web_favicon	an SVG icon
web_back_cover	the back cover; without it a plain one is generated with Chromium

serve builds the site, then serves it at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (--port changes the port) until Ctrl+C.

QA report

$ md2book qa
$ md2book qa --printed

QA-REPORT.md is a checklist to read before publishing. qa reports problems and never changes your files. It covers:

• Manuscript: chapter count and order, code includes, word and character counts, and a table of chapters with their sections.
• Unicode and Burmese text: text that is not NFC-normalized, replacement characters, zero-width and no-break spaces, BOMs, control characters, doubled vowel or medial signs, doubled punctuation, a space before ။ or ၊, double spaces, repeated words and HTML tags, with file and line.
• Typeface coverage: which characters each font draws, and any character none of the book's fonts cover.
• PDF (when built): page facts and checks, with sample pages rendered to qa-pages/. --printed checks the printed PDF.
• EPUB (when built): reflowable layout, embedded fonts, chapter text identical to the manuscript, structure, and the epubcheck result when it is on your PATH.
• Metadata placeholders: book fields that still contain PLACEHOLDER.
• Known layout limitations and a section for your own review notes.

qa checks the PDF and EPUB already in the output folder; run the builds first, or use build all, which builds everything and then writes the report.