
Serverless eBook Using Gitbook, GitHub Pages, GitHub Actions, and Calibre - novalagung
https://devops.novalagung.com/en/cicd-serverless-ebook-gitbook-github-pages-actions-calibre.html
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quickthrower2
You can also make a serverless ebook from any web page by clicking print to
pdf

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JeremyNT
The reading experience for PDFs on most devices is really poor, and most sites
aren't designed with printing in mind to begin with, making it even worse.
Standard ebook formats tend to work a lot better.

This post seems specifically to be about rendering your documentation both as
html and also as an ebook, which is something I can definitely get behind. The
experience of having a structured ebook instead of HTML is really valuable
especially when doing things like learning programming languages, where
precise formatting tends to really be important for legibility. I recently
encountered this when perusing Rust's online books, some of which did not seem
to have ebook equivalents.

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prepend
This is a nice tutorial, but I’m a little sour on gitbook because their
project really pushes their service, that seems really expensive to me.

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praveenweb
In case you are looking only for a web app you can check out this open source
starter - [https://github.com/hasura/gatsby-gitbook-
starter](https://github.com/hasura/gatsby-gitbook-starter) (Made using Gatsby
and MDX).

You can write markdown with added benefits of React components and this Gatsby
starter will render a GitBook theme documentation site. Self host using Docker
or build the static bundle and deploy to Netlify :)

Disclaimer: I maintain this starter.

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adz_6891
This is really nice. Great work!

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lqs469
It's a nice tutorial about Github action and Gitbook. But this has little to
do with the Serverless. Or just "Server less".

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codemusings
Serverless has to be the dumbest term in the tech industry.

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jedberg
It's not great, but I haven't heard a decent replacement yet. One that
captures "you don't have to manage servers or infrastructure" in a single
word.

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ahartmetz
"Stateless" is closer to the truth than "serverless".

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jedberg
Not really though. There is plenty of state. Configure files, databases, blob
storage. These are all part of the serverless ecosystem.

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ahartmetz
There are plenty of servers as well!

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wjdp
No writeup, but have published a 'serverless' Kindle dictionary using a
similar method. This is for reading the Game of Thrones books to improve the
x-ray feature. Instead of Gitbook it's just a Jekyll site with some Liquid
templates to generate the files needed for Amazon's kindlegen program. Builds
happen in Travis and it's hosted on Pages.

\- [https://github.com/wjdp/gotdict](https://github.com/wjdp/gotdict) \-
[https://gotdict.wjdp.uk/](https://gotdict.wjdp.uk/)

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Finnucane
Isn't a serverless ebook just an ebook?

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ASalazarMX
Nooo, because the server would be your reader! What kind of primitive stack
are you promoting?

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innocenat
How do I have Serverful eBook?

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BossingAround
O'Reilly subscription, probably?

Turn the book into HTML, serve the HTML on demand and BAM, Book as a Service!

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retonom
how in the world is this serverless?

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codegladiator
It's not your server.

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dejj
"Serverless" is the new "Cloud"

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collyw
and "Cloud" is the new "Web"

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marvindanig
That's a cool website. Book != [website, file, blog] though.

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crooked-v
> and it will not deploy only the web version, but the ebook files as well (in
> .pdf, .epub, and .mobi format).

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marvindanig
i know. that is great! but all of those options are file formats. books !=
files. books are cool, files are ugly. which is also why 99 of 100 people
still prefer to buy the dead tree books over tech jazz called files.

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input_sh
What a weird hill to die on. Books are long written compositions, their format
(whether it's on dead trees, computer, or spoken out) is completely
irrelevant.

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marvindanig
it always sounds weird until it isn’t. the container is the most important
characteristics of a book. to pass it off as irrelevant is not only
intellectually dishonest but also just plain wrong.

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tasogare
No, it's not. Some of the oldest books are written on bamboo stripes, and
others on clay tablets.

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marvindanig
> Some of the oldest books are written on bamboo stripes, and others on clay
> tablets.

exactly. there used to be physical scrolls too before the romans invented the
paginated codex. all of those older tech died later because it was hard to
beat direct access, referential accessibility and format-ability of the modern
physical codex book. our current tech emulates the physical scroll too and is
therefore not able to compete with dead tree books.

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Cederfjard
Merriam Webster:

    
    
      book noun
      \ ˈbu̇k  \
      
      Definition of book (Entry 1 of 3)
      1a: a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory
      b: a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together between a front and back cover
      an address book
      c: a long written or printed literary composition
      reading a good book
      reference books
      hardcover and paperback books
      d: a major division of a treatise or literary work
      the books of the Bible
      eaccounting : a record of a business's financial transactions or financial condition —often used in plural
      the books show a profit
      f: MAGAZINE sense 1a
      g: E-BOOK
    
      [...]
    

Cambridge Dictionary:

    
    
      book
      noun
      UK  /bʊk/ US  /bʊk/
       
      A1 [ C ]
      a written text that can be published in printed or electronic form:
      
      [...]
    

You're entitled to have your own rigid definition if you wish, but it's pretty
silly to go in a public forum and try to browbeat others with it.

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moron4hire
I would say he is not entitled to any such thing, as he doesn't own the
language.

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marvindanig
Ah, the overflowing privilege of handing out entitlements? Your brethren
doesn’t own the language either, you know that right?

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jshevek
The situation is in no way symmetric, as only one party is claiming a non-
standard limitation on valid uses of the language. The other parties are
claiming both a standard and more permissive use.

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marvindanig
This is a classic flat earth argument.

‘Because people are saying so...’

Proper definition is the only definition that there is. Improper definitions
may be valid uses in colloquial speak, but that doesn’t work for accurate
description of products at hand. Success of physical books, as in the data, is
a proof of proper usage. I rest my case. Time to go back to work.

Edit: Response to the child comment below:

You're going in the wrong direction.

That 'books are not files' is a plain fact. It has nothing to do with popular
opinion or liberal usage of words. Although, if you were to look at it
liberally through the lens of popular usage alone then also the usage and
growth of dead tree books over the shallow market of files masquerading as
ebooks will reveal the same plain fact.

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jshevek
> _This is a classic flat earth argument. ‘Because people are saying so...’_

No. Again you reason by false equivalence. The shape of the earth is not
determined by popular opinion. The meaning of words is determined by popular
usage.

