ukebook_md

Intro

A toolset to generate songsheets and indexed songbooks from ukedown-formatted inputs.

ukedown is a special case of Markdown, with additions for inline chords, performance notes etc. See the repo linked above for more details

It is intended to be used to manage songbooks for ukulele groups, specifically Karauke, where we have a requirement to produce both 'band' and 'singers' versions of a given song.

Here you will find tools to convert directories full of 'ukedown' formatted files to HTML, with index pages and (fairly) responsive CSS.

The end goal will be to build responsive HTML (Supporting rotate and resize) and PDF documents in both landscape and portrait modes, in a variety of styles, but initially

1. karauke band format (inline chords, but no diagrams)
2. karauke singers' format (no inline chords or diagrams - lyrics only)
3. Ukulele Wednesdays format (both inline chords and diagrams)

Contents

Scripts

script	function
genbook.py	generate HTML structures from directorie(s) of udn files
makepdf.py	convert HTML output into PDF songbook
chordgen.py	Generate chord diagrams in SVG format
makesong.py	Generate an individual PDF from a single udn file

configuration files

chords.yml - defines fingering, neck position and barres for known chords.

These are used to generate SVG chord diagrams (scalable vector diagrams) which are inserted into each songsheet

fretboard.yml - defines a standard ukulele fretboard layout

(for use with an SVG template) - number of strings etc is customisable, so could also be used for other instruments (guitar etc)

Requirements

You'll need a python virtual environment, python 3.5+ - the toolset has only been tested with that.

There is a requirements.txt file in the repo that can be used to generate this.

Or you can just install all those packages into a system or user directory, of course.

• markdown (well, obviously)
• jinja2 (for templating)

Current Functionality

• Generation of HTML documents, with links to CSS files
• SVG chord diagrams
• HTML docs generated from modular jinja2 templates
• CSS grid used for a flexible layout - text degrades into multiple columns as the page gets wider.

PDF Generation

PDF generation is handled by the Weasyprint libraries.

A separate tool has been added to build PDFs from web content, but this will eventually be added to the main book generation tools.

PDF generation has some basic requirements and limitations

• weasyprint doesn't support CSS Grid (yet?)
• It cannot render internal (i.e. directly in HTML) SVG images

To overcome this, for PDF use the --external flag to genbook.py for content you intend to render as PDF

The makepdf.py tool uses a custom stylesheet without grid

An example

Generate web content using the PDF stylesheet (it still works as HTML):

./genbook.py --external -o BOOK_DIRECTORY -s pdfprint INPUT_DIRECTORY

Then use the included makepdf.py script to generate your output PDF

./makepdf.py BOOK_DIRECTORY -o FILENAME.pdf