The Markua Manual
The Markua Manual
How to Write in Markua on Leanpub
About the Book
Imagine you owned a magical typewriter.
When you used this magical typewriter, you wrote with fewer distractions. You didn't just write faster, you wrote better.
With your magical typewriter, you never worried about layout. The book formatted itself.
You could hit a key on your magical typewriter to create an ebook from your manuscript with one click.
All ebook formats would be created, and they'd all look good. You'd have PDF for computers and EPUB for everywhere else. The book would look great on phones.
With your magical typewriter, you could publish your book before it was even done, and get feedback from readers all over the world. You could automatically share book updates with them. You would press one key on your magical typewriter to publish a new version, and all your readers would have it instantly.
With your magical typewriter, you could easily compare your current manuscript to any other version of your manuscript that had ever existed.
When the book was done, if you decided to make a print book, you could press a key on your magical typewriter to generate InDesign with one click. Your designer or publisher could use this as a starting point for producing a great looking print book.
With your magical typewriter, you'd only have to do one thing: Write.
Wouldn't it be great if such a magical typewriter existed?
It does. At Leanpub, we're building it.
But there's one requirement for this magical typewriter to exist: a simple, coherent, open source, free, plain text format for a book manuscript.
This simple format is what authors will write their books in, instead of Word. It will enable an ecosystem of tools to emerge around it.
This simple format will be the basis for the magical typewriter.
This simple format is called Markua.
This is its user manual.
About the Author
Bundles that include this book
Table of Contents
-
Introduction
- The Magical Typewriter
- How to Write a Novel in Markua 0.10
- How to Write a Computer Programming Book in Markua
- How to Write a Course (MOOC) in Markua
- Markua: Markdown for Books and Courses
- Why the Name “Markua”?
- The Markua Manual vs. The Markua Spec
- Markua 0.10 and Markua 0.30
- Differences with Leanpub Flavoured Markdown (LFM)
- Acknowledgments
- Text Formatting
- Headings
- Paragraphs and Blank Lines
-
Resources
-
Resource Insertion Methods
- Figures
- Spans
- Inserting Resources Into a Span Context
-
Resource Locations
- Local Resources
- Web Resources
- Inline Resources
-
Resource Types and Formats
- Images
- Video
- Audio
- Code
- Math
- Tables
-
Resource Insertion Methods
-
Whitespace: Spaces, Tabs and Newlines
-
Newlines
- Single Newline = Forced Line Break in Markua 0.10 (configurable in Markua 0.30)
- Three or More Newlines = Two Newlines = One Blank Line
- One Blank Line Is Added When Concatenating Manuscript Files
- All Blank Lines at the Beginning and End of a File are Removed
-
Spaces and Tabs
- Spaces and Tabs at the Beginning of a Line are Only to Determine List Containment, and Extra Spaces are Removed
- Spaces and Tabs at the End of a Line are Removed
- Internal Spaces are Collapsed to One Space, Except At the End of Sentences
-
Newlines
- Lists
- Definition Lists
-
Block Elements
-
Scene Breaks (
* * *) -
Blockquotes (
>) -
Asides (
A>or{aside}) -
Blurbs (
B>or{blurb})- Supported Attributes for Blurbs
-
Syntactic Sugar for Specific Blurb Classes:
D>,E>,I>,Q,T,W>,X> -
Using Blurbs to Center Text with
C> -
Using Extension Attributes on Blurbs to add
iconSupport
-
Scene Breaks (
-
Quizzes and Exercises
- Quiz and Exercise Headings and Other Content
- An Empty Quiz or Exercise is Not an Error
- A Malformed Quiz or Exercise is an Error
- Supported Attributes on Quizzes and/or Exercises
-
Question Types: Multiple Choice, Fill In The Blank
- Multiple Choice Questions
- Fill In The Blank Questions
- Creating a Course or MOOC from a Markua Document
- Question Alternates
-
Span Elements
-
Links
- Inline Links
- Automatic Links
-
Explicitly Creating Spans with
[…]- Sometimes a Square Bracket is Just a Square Bracket
-
Footnotes and Endnotes
- Footnotes
- Endnotes
- Single Reference to Footnotes and Endnotes
- Footnotes and Endnotes Support Required for Paragraphs Only
-
Crosslinks and ids
- Defining an id
-
Referencing an
idWith a Crosslink -
Rules for
ids and Crosslinks
-
Character Substitution (
X--for X—,X --for X –,...for …)- Optional Automatic Curly Quotes Outside of Code Blocks and Spans
-
Escaping Special Characters with Backslash (
\) -
Code Spans and Backticks (
`)
-
Links
-
Metadata
-
Attributes
- Attribute List Format
- Attribute Keys
- Attribute Values
-
idAttributes -
Conditional Inclusion Attributes on Headings:
book,sample
- Directives
- Page Breaks
-
Attributes
-
Appendices
- No Inline HTML
- Differences with Markdown
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
80% Royalties. Earn $16 on a $20 book.
We pay 80% royalties. That's not a typo: you earn $16 on a $20 sale. If we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book or course for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned$12,307,240writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
- #2
Personal Finance
Jason AndersonThis textbook provides an in-depth analysis on personal finance that is both practical and straightforward in its approach. It has been written in such a way that the readers can gain knowledge without getting overwhelmed by the technical terms. Suitable for both beginners and advanced learners.
- #3
Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA
Trisha Gee and Helen ScottIf we treat our IDE as a text editor, we are doing ourselves a disservice. Using a combination of tutorials and a questions-and-answers approach, Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA will help you find ways to use IntelliJ IDEA that enable you to work comfortably and productively as a professional developer.
- #4
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
- #5
Mastering STM32 - Second Edition
Carmine NovielloWith more than 1200 microcontrollers, STM32 is probably the most complete ARM Cortex-M platform on the market. This book aims to be the most complete guide around introducing the reader to this exciting MCU portfolio from ST Microelectronics and its official CubeHAL and STM32CubeIDE development environment.
- #6
R Programming for Data Science
Roger D. PengThis book brings the fundamentals of R programming to you, using the same material developed as part of the industry-leading Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization. The skills taught in this book will lay the foundation for you to begin your journey learning data science. Printed copies of this book are available through Lulu.
- #7
Machine Learning Q and AI
Sebastian Raschka, PhDHave you recently completed a machine learning or deep learning course and wondered what to learn next? With 30 questions and answers on key concepts in machine learning and AI, this book provides bite-sized bits of knowledge for your journey to becoming a machine learning expert.
- #8
Stats One
William Foote - #9
The Rails 7 Way
Obie Fernandez, Lucas Dohmen, and Tom Henrik AadlandThe Rails™ 7 Way is the comprehensive, authoritative reference guide for professionals delivering production-quality code using modern Ruby on Rails. It illuminates the entire Rails 7 API, its most powerful idioms, design approaches, and libraries. Building on the previous editions, this edition has been heavily refactored and updated.
- #10
Gradual Modularization for Ruby and Rails
Stephan HagemannGet yourself a new tool to manage your Rails application and your growing engineering organization! Prevent the ball-of-mud (and fix it!). Go for microservices or SOA if it makes sense not just because you don't have any other tool. Do all this through a low-overhead tool: packages. Enable better conversations to make practical changes today.
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #3
1500 QUIZ COMMENTATI (3 libri)
3 Books
Tre libri dei QUIZ MMG Commentati al prezzo di DUE! I QUIZ dei concorsi ufficiali di Medicina Generale relativi agli anni: 2000-2001-2003-2012-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017-2018-2019-2020-2021 +100 inediti Raccolti in unico bundle per aiutarvi nello studio e nella preparazione al concorso. All'interno di ogni libro i quiz sono stati suddivisi per... - #4
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #5
Practical FP in Scala + Functional event-driven architecture
2 Books
Practical FP in Scala (A hands-on approach) & Functional event-driven architecture, aka FEDA, (Powered by Scala 3), together as a bundle! The content of PFP in Scala is a requirement to understand FEDA so why not take advantage of this bundle!? - #6
Modern C++ Collection
3 Books
Get All about Modern C++C++ Standard Library, including C++20Concurrency with Modern C++, including C++20C++20Each book has about 200 complete code examples. Updates are included. When I update one of the books, you immediately get the updated bundle. You can expect significant updates to each new C++ standard (C++23, C++26, .. ) and also... - #7
Linux Administration Complet
4 Books
Ce lot comprend les quatre volumes du Guide Linux Administration :Linux Administration, Volume 1, Administration fondamentale : Guide pratique de préparation aux examens de certification LPIC 1, Linux Essentials, RHCSA et LFCS. Administration fondamentale. Introduction à Linux. Le Shell. Traitement du texte. Arborescence de fichiers. Sécurité... - #9
Development and Deployment of Multiplayer Online Games, Part ARCH. Architecture (Vol. I-III)
3 Books
What's the Big Idea? The idea behind this book is to summarize the body of knowledge that already exists on multiplayer games but is not available in one single place.And quite a fewof the issues discussed within this series (planned as three nine volumes ~300 pages each), while known in the industry, have not been published at all (except for... - #10
Growing Agile: The Complete Coach's Guide
7 Books
Growing Agile: Coach's Guide Series This bundle provides a collection of training and workshop plans for a variety of agile topics. The series is aimed at agile coaches, trainers and ScrumMasters who often find themselves needing to help teams understand agile concepts. Each book in the series provides the plans, slides, handouts and activity...
