Disseminate

Disseminate is a document processing system and static site generator for textbooks, books, novels, articles, reports and essays.

Disseminate is a markup language, like Markdown or reStructuredText, written in disseminate text format (.dm) that aims to have a simple and consistent syntax, to produce clean and simple project structure and to contain useful functionality for academic and non-academics. Projects may contain a single document or a tree of interconnected documents comprising chapters, raw data, figures and images in a source controlled repository. The Disseminate software is coded in Python 3 and disseminate projects can be converted to a static website with .html, .txt, .tex, .pdf and .epub targets.

• Documentation: https://docs.dissemia.org/projects/disseminate/en/latest
• Mailing list: https://groups.google.com/g/disseminate-usage
• Source code: https://github.com/dissemia/disseminate
• Bug reports: https://github.com/dissemia/disseminate/issues

Samples

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• NMR Textbook by Justin Lorieau

Features

1. Header and Body. Disseminate documents may optionally contain a YAML header to configure a document and a body written in disseminate syntax.
2. Document Trees. Projects can be as simple as one document, or it can be a book comprising multiple parts and chapters.
3. Uniform Language. All tags are written with a simple format and all tags are allowed. Certain tags have enhanced typesetting functionality, and tags may optionally have attributes to format how a tag is rendered.
   ex: This is @b{my} sentence. or @img[width=40%]{src/figure-1.png}.
4. Macros. Macros allow users to generate their own tags for repetitive code fragments. These are specified in the document header and are available to all sub-documents.
5. Templates and Typography. A top priority for Disseminate is the production of documents that follow good typographical style. Templates are available for textbooks with Tufte formatting, books, novels, reports and articles.
6. Internal Labels. Labels to other documents, chapters, sections, figures and tables are handled consistently and easily to create internal links. The formatting of labels are either controlled by the template or, optionally, defined by the user in document headers.
7. Multiple Target Formats. Disseminate projects can be rendered as websites (.html), .pdf, .epub, .txt or .tex.
8. Automatic Conversions. The Disseminate includes a customized build automation system. Disseminate's custom builder is tightly integrated into Disseminate such that small changes are easily identified. This system creates build recipes for converting files in the correct formats, and it includes features similar to other build systems, like Scons, to detect build changes based on source file signatures. The build system is extensible and pluggable such that new features can be easily implemented.
9. Inline Plots and Diagrams. Tags can handle raw data and code, which are then automatically rendered into images, figures and diagrams.
10. Equations. Tags for rendering equations in LaTeX format.
    ex: This equation, @eq{y = mx + b}, is inline
11. Webserver. A built-in webserver allows users to preview their processed document projects.
12. Version Control. Document projects are stored in source code repositories, which enable the tracking of changes, the contribution of multiple authors and the inclusion of raw data.

Advanced Features

1. Document Inheritance. Entries in a document's header will impact how that document is rendered as well as how all of its sub-documents are rendered.
2. Target Attributes. Tag attributes may include target specifiers to change how a tag is rendered in different target formats.
   ex: @img[width=80% width.html=40%]{figures/fig1.png}
3. Label Formats. The rendering of label captions and reference links can be customized for a document or for a project in the root document.
4. Signals. Processing functions use a built-in ordered signals framework to easily insert processing steps and to create plug-ins.

Project Comparisons

Sphinx and ReST

Sphinx specializes in code documentation whereas Disseminate focuses on the general writing of books, articles, essays and reports.

• Disseminate's syntax is simple, uniform, easy to read and understand
• Disseminate's build system is integrated. Sphinx uses Make, which can miss rebuilds of documents when documents are inter-related--with chapter numbers and references, for example.
• Disseminate's build system is multithreaded, and its dependencies are built implicitly. This means that a user doesn't have to worry about how dependencies, like images or data, are converted or built.
• Disseminate's project structures are simple. A document project can be a single file or a complex book, like 'War and Peace'. The objective is to make document projects accessible to non-coders.
• Disseminate's templates focus on typography. Source code documentation is designed to easily navigate between disparate pages and to present potentially complicated text structures. Books, articles and reports are long-form, and Disseminate focuses on readability and simplified, non-obtrusive navigation.
• The Disseminate parser is intentionally simple so that others can easily contribute to the project.

Pandoc

Jekyll and Hugo

Installation

Disseminate is current available for MacOS and Linux operating systems.

Disseminate can be installed with pip, Homebrew or as a github clone (Step 1). The base Disseminate installation can render documents in html, txt and epub formats.

Optional, additional dependencies may be installed (Step 2) to render documents in pdf format and to include converters (builders) in different formats (Step 2).

The following installation options require an open terminal in MacOS or Linux.

Step 1: Disseminate (Base Installation)

Option 1: Homebrew (MacOS and Linux)

brew install dissemia/dissemia/disseminate

Option 2: Pip (MacOS and Linux)

pip install disseminate

(Optional) To render in pdf format, install either MacTeX, TeXLive or some other distribution. These and other dependencies can be installed with a package manager like Homebrew or apt get install.

Option 3: Github (MacOS and Linux)

The github repository can be installed in a python virtual environment. The base Disseminate project can be used to render documents in html and epub formats.

1. (Optional) Setup a virtual environment using python 3.7+

mkvirtualenv -p python3.7 disseminate

2. Clone the github repository

git clone https://github.com/dissemia/disseminate.git

3. Install disseminate

cd disseminate/
make install  ## or python setup.py install

Step 2: Additional Dependencies

LaTeX with Homebrew (MacOS and Linux)

Homebrew can be used to install a basic LaTeX distribution of TeXLive.

brew install --cask basictex
bash --login

After install basictex, additional LaTeX packages are install with TeX Live.

sudo tlmgr update --self
sudo tlmgr install easylist enumitem tufte-latex

LaTeX with TeX Live (MacOS and Linux)

Alternatively, TeXLive can be installed from the TeXLive website. Once installed, additional packages are installed as follows:

sudo tlmgr update --self
sudo tlmgr install easylist enumitem tufte-latex

Check External Dependencies

Disseminate uses a variety of external tools to convert files and render documents. If these tools are available, the corresponding converter (Builder) will be available as well. To view which external dependencies were found by Disseminate, type the following command.

dm setup --check

The output should be similar to the following:

  Checking required dependencies for 'python'                       [  PASS  ]  
    Checking alternative dependencies for 'executables'             [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'python3.6'                               [MISSING ]  
      Checking dependency 'python3.7'                               [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'python3.8'                               [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'python3.9'                               [  PASS  ]  
    Checking required dependencies for 'packages'                   [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'regex>=2018.11.22'                       [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'jinja2>=2.11'                            [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'lxml>=4.3.0'                             [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'python-slugify>=2.0.1'                   [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'pdfCropMargins>=0.1.4'                   [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'click>=7.0'                              [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'tornado>=6.1'                            [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'pygments >=2.6'                          [  PASS  ]    
      Checking dependency 'diskcache>=4.1'                          [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'pathvalidate>=2.2'                       [  PASS  ]  
  Checking required dependencies for 'image external deps'          [  PASS  ]  
    Checking alternative dependencies for 'executables'             [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'asy'                                     [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'convert'                                 [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'pdf2svg'                                 [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'pdf-crop-margins'                        [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'rsvg-convert'                            [  PASS  ]  
  Checking required dependencies for 'pdf'                          [  PASS  ]  
    Checking required dependencies for 'executables'                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking alternative dependencies for 'compilers'             [  PASS  ]  
        Checking dependency 'pdflatex'                              [  PASS  ]  
        Checking dependency 'xelatex'                               [  PASS  ]  
        Checking dependency 'lualatex'                              [  PASS  ]  
      Checking alternative dependencies for 'package_managers'      [  PASS  ]  
        Checking dependency 'kpsewhich'                             [  PASS  ]  
    Checking required dependencies for 'packages'                   [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'graphicx'                                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'caption'                                 [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'amsmath'                                 [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'mathtools'                               [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'bm'                                      [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'easylist'                                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'fancyvrb'                                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'hyperref'                                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'enumitem'                                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'geometry'                                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'xcolor'                                  [  PASS  ]  
    Checking alternative dependencies for 'fonts'                   [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'ecrm1200'                                [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'tcrm1200'                                [  PASS  ]  
    Checking alternative dependencies for 'classes'                 [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'article'                                 [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'report'                                  [  PASS  ]  
      Checking dependency 'tufte-book'                              [  PASS  ]

An entry with PASS indicates that the dependency was found. If a dependency is missing, we recommend installing it with Homebrew or apt install.

Usage

Create a project directory

mkdir -p ~/Documents/Disseminate/test-project/src
cd ~/Documents/Disseminate/test-project

Create a root document

echo "@chapter{My First Chapter}" > src/index.dm

Start the internal webserver

dm preview
[2020-04-22 13:36:08 -0500] [58827] [INFO] Goin' Fast @ http://127.0.0.1:8899
[2020-04-22 13:36:08 -0500] [58827] [INFO] Starting worker [58827]

Go to http://localhost:8899