Quick start

About this section

The documentation gives the program's usage detailed description as well as the page content writing methods and tricks. But such information is probably not necessary for just trying the program out. This section describes the ways of quick starting.

Note

Before following this section, the program must be installed, see the Installation section.

Quick start script

The quick-start script creates a small new project with a typical structure and with some sample content.

Note

As for now, the quick start script is implemented for Windows only.

After the program is installed, create an empty directory where the documentation must be set up, then switch to there in the command line terminal:

>cd C:\your\path\your_project

Execute the following command:

>%MD2HTML_HOME%\bin\new_project\new_project.bat

All necessary project files will be created in the directory your_project. Just generate the documentation by double-clicking the command file generate_doc_py.bat or generate_doc_java.bat. Open the generated file readme.html in the your_project directory to see the content.

Note

The your_project directory must better be empty before running the new project generation script.

Creating a simplest project

Here is an instruction for manually creating a very simple documentation project.

In a project directory create the following artifacts.

File generate_doc_py.bat or generate_doc_java.bat. May be copied from the program's root directory. There are corresponding generate_doc_py or generate_doc_java scripts for Linux.

Argument file md2html_args.json with a content like this:

{
    "options": {
        "verbose": true
    },
    "default": {
        "template": "template.html",
        "no-css": true,
        "verbose": true
    },
    "documents": [
        { "input": "example.txt", "title": "Example" }
    ]
}

Template file template.html with a content like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html style="font-size: 20px;">
<head>
    <title>{{title}}</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
</head>
    <body>
{{{content}}}
    </body>
</html>

Example Markdown file example.txt with a content like this:

[TOC]

--------------------------------------------------

# About this page

This page demonstrates a simplest possible documentation.

# Formatting and lists

Demonstrated are:

- **bold** text decoration;
- *italic* text decoration;
- `code` text decoration;
- a list usage.

Click ether of the files generate_doc_py.bat or generate_doc_java.bat (or corresponding files for Linux). Alternatively the project's directory may be opened in the command line and the scripts may be run in there. The result file example.html will be generated.

The result HTML page in this simple example doesn't contain nor link any style sheets and uses the browser's default styles.

The described example is reproduced in the directory simplest_project and the generated page may be viewed here.