redtape

redtape is a focused document generator that uses github flavored markdown to generate simple, attractive HTML documents. It automatically integrates with twitter bootstrap and features simple, attractive styling. redtape is inspired by d, but attempts to have a simple interface while still allowing users to style and control their output documents to a high degree of customization.

Installing

If you are on linux or OSX, you can use pip to install:

> pip install redtape

Which will install redtape and its dependencies.

Usage

To use, run rt on a document or directory full of documents. If run on a directory, rt will create html files for every markdown file (.md, .mdown, or .markdown extensions):

> rt mydocument.md
> rt documentation/

assets

By default, rt assumes you have set up a location to serve the files from which have the assets that rt links into these documents. The layout is exactly the same as the assets directory in the redtape repository: /assets/{css,img,js}/.. for each asset that you will be using. If you want to use redtape's default assets, you can easily create a suitable asset directory in the current directory by running:

> rt --create-assets

If you are running in single document mode or do not wish to set up an asset directory on the eventual host for your HTML documents, you can tell redtape to embed each asset used in a document by using --embed:

> rt --embed mydocument.md

javascript

By default, redtape not require any javascript to run, and will not embed any in --embed mode. If the --prettify option is selected, google's prettify library will be used for source highlighting instead of pygments, and if --prettify and --embed are both used, it will be automatically embedded.

Redtape is also suitable for simple single-page javascript demonstrations, and if --use-js is enabled, redtape will include jquery and bootstrap's javascript libraries.

customizing output

Customizing output is easy to do in a variety of ways. Besides changing the asset CSS for non-embedded documents, you can also add headers and footers or even use custom document templates based on redtape's default template.

headers and footers

If you have a customized document header or footer you want added to your documents, you can either add header.html and footer.html documents to the base directory you are rendering or set default paths to be used in the config as header and footer. By default, these will be placed at the top and bottom of your document, respectively.

A sample set of documents could be:

> ls mydocs/
mydocs/index.md mydocs/simple.md mydocs/advanced.md
mydocs/header.html mydocs/footer.html

Rendering mydocs with rt mydocs will use the header and footer for each document in the directory.

custom templates

If you have very specific requirements, you can write your own document template and have total control of the output. Redtape uses the jinja2 templating engine, which is a widely used templating system similar to django templates. Run redtape with the --context argument to get a brief idea of what variables are available to the template.

You can also inherit from basic.jinja, which is the name of redtape's default template. This template defines two blocks, head and body, which would allow you to craft a distinct document body while, for instance, retaining the basic CSS and JavaScript functionality of redtape. Overriding both will leave you with a standard HTML5 document structure.

You can specify a custom template to use with -t, --template or place it in the document directory as custom.html or custom.jinja.

Requirements:

• Python