Creating a PDF Book from Markdown with BoxLang

Recently I’ve done some blog posts on BoxLang involving Markdown and PDFs, and I was curious if I could put together something that really demonstrated a complete tool of some sort. With that in mind, I built a "book" system where you can author pages in Markdown and use a BoxLang CLI script to generate a resulting PDF. It’s more a POC than a real app, but it was pretty fun to build. Here’s what I did. Functionality At a high level, the book is created from a source of Markdown files. Each Markdown file can use front matter (data on top) to define variables that are evaluated at the time the book is created. You can also use a "global" data file to define... more →
Posted in: JavaScript

The Book Banning Map of America

The American Library Association (ALA) reports that attempts to ban books “surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022 numbers, reaching the highest level ever documented by ALA.” Nearly half of the books targeted for banning were related to issues of LGBTQ+ communities or race.Now the ALA has partnered with Little Free Library and PEN America to release an interactive map which shows Maps Mania… more →
Posted in: Interactive Maps