# The Merb Open Source Book

This book is an open source book written for and by the Merb community.

Preview: <http://book.merbist.com>

To run the book locally,

just clone this repo and start the bundled copy of Merb:

		$ ./bin/merb

And open http://localhost:4000/ in your browser

Note that you might have to "redeploy" the native gems

if the <tt>merb</tt> app server doesn't start:

		$ ./bin/thor merb:gem:redeploy

A static HTML and a PDF version will soon be available online.

## How to contribute

 * Fork this project

 * Modify, fix, add content

 * send me a pull request

For the moment, the content of the book

is located inside <tt>./book-content/</tt>

and is organized by languages, chapters, and pages.

Chapters and pages must be lowercase and start by a digit

followed by a dash and the chapter/page title

without spaces or any non ascii characters.

All content files are Markdown files;

the <tt>merb</tt> app uses [maruku][] to render these files.

Check the [supported syntax][]

or check ./book-content/en/1-introduction/1-ruby.markdown

for a good example of how to use images, quotes, and CSS selectors.

The book supports multiple languages.

Each language needs to replicate the English folder structure,

using the *same* file names.

If you are copying a page or chapter to your language folder

and want to mark a section of your text as requiring translation,

just add the <tt>to-translate</tt> class

to the CSS selector of your content, as shown below:

    {: .to-translate}

Please follow our editor guidelines, especially:

* use a language branch (so you can see what changed in the English content)

* one sentence per line (so merging is easier)

<http://groups.google.com/group/merb-book/web/guidelines>

## Translation leaders

* Bosnian:     http://github.com/sidonath (Damir Zekić)

* Chinese:     http://github.com/zhhz (Zhonghai Zuo)

* French:      http://github.com/pointcom  (Mathieu Fosse)

* German:      http://github.com/cypher (Markus Prinz)

* Italian:     http://github.com/carlopecchia (Carlo Pecchia)

* Japanese:    http://github.com/kwatch (Makoto Kuwata)

* Portuguese:  http://github.com/akitaonrails (Fabio Akita)

* Russian:     http://github.com/cheba (Alex Mankuta)

* Spanish:     (pending)

* Dutch:       http://github.com/pvelder (Peter De Velder)

* Arabic       http://github.com/khelll (Khaled AlHabache)

## Legal

The content of this book is licensed under the [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license][]

The source code of the application is dual licensed

under the MIT and GPL licenses:

* [MIT](http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)

* [GPL](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)

[Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

[maruku]:             http://maruku.rubyforge.org

[supported syntax]:   http://maruku.rubyforge.org/markdown_syntax.html