Nelson GitBook 📚

Welcome to the Nelson GitBook repository! This project hosts the official documentation for the Nelson array programming language.

Overview 🌟

This repository contains:

• HTML documentation — built by Nelson's buildhelpweb and published to nelson-lang.github.io/nelson-gitbook.
• Markdown sources — generated under markdown/ for use with GitBook or offline reading.
• PDF builder — a Rust tool (nelson-pdf-builder) that uses Pandoc to produce printable manuals.

Supported languages: English (en) and French (fr).

Prerequisites 🛠️

Tool	Purpose
Nelson	Generate HTML and Markdown help files
Node.js	Run Prettier for Markdown formatting
Rust / Cargo	Build the PDF builder tool
Pandoc + a PDF engine (e.g. wkhtmltopdf)	Render PDF manuals

Install Node.js dependencies:

nvm use .
npm install

Updating the Documentation ⚙️

Run the following script from inside Nelson to regenerate all HTML and Markdown files:

% From the nelson-gitbook root directory
run('./scripts/update_help.m');

This script:

1. Calls buildhelpweb to produce versioned and latest HTML output under docs/releases/.
2. Calls buildhelpmd to regenerate the Markdown sources under markdown/.
3. Runs Prettier to normalise formatting.

After running, review and commit the modified files.

Building PDF Manuals 📄

Linux / macOS

./pandoc-build-pdf.sh              # builds both en and fr
./pandoc-build-pdf.sh en           # English only
./pandoc-build-pdf.sh fr           # French only

Windows

pandoc-build-pdf.bat               :: builds both en and fr
pandoc-build-pdf.bat en            :: English only
pandoc-build-pdf.bat fr            :: French only

The scripts compile the Rust PDF builder (cargo build --release) and then invoke it. Pandoc and the PDF engine must be available in PATH.

Published Documentation 🌐

The latest documentation is available at: https://nelson-lang.github.io/nelson-gitbook/

Contributing 🤝

Contributions are welcome! Please open issues or submit pull requests for improvements, corrections, or new content.

License 📜

This project is licensed under the same license as Nelson. See the LICENSE file for details.

Contact 📧

Maintainer: Allan CORNET
Email: nelson.numerical.computation@gmail.com