Embedding code snippets in iBooks Author

Question

I've been playing with iBooks Author all morning and I haven't had any luck embedding code snippets. Does anyone else have any ideas?

A few things I've tried:

• A custom widget. This won't work, because widgets just have image previews and have to be tapped to be read. I'll use these for runnable examples of code (at least for CoffeeScript/JavaScript/ClojureScript), but not for formatting code within the flow of text
• Text boxes - Getting these to appear similarly in portrait & landscape orientation has been painful so far.
• A paragraph style. It looks like this is where I'm going to start next. With the inspector, "Text -> More" seems to hide what I want in terms of background shading and disabling hyphenation.

I'm copy-pasting syntax-highlighted code from textmate using the copy as RTF bundle, but iBooks Author isn't respecting the colors. Any ideas on syntax highlighting?

Answer 1

There is a way more simple way to do this... I'm using iBooks Author 2.0 it has a "Paste and Retain Styles" option that works like a charm.

I edit the code snippets in Xcode then select and copy the section I want:

Then control click where I want to paste it into my book:

Done! The snippet is included with syntax highlighting:

Pro Tip 1: Take time to set up Xcode to use the font you want so you don't have to fiddle with it once the code is pasted into iBooks Author:

Pro Tip 2: Here are some other useful settings for your code snippet paragraphs, keep the lines together and disable auto-hyphenation.

Answer 2

I just tried the trick I use to get syntax-highlighted code into Keynote, and I think it works, though I don't have an iPad handy to export the book and try it.

1. Edit the code in MacVim
2. Make sure syntax highlighting is on:
   1. Hit escape
   2. Type ":syn on" and hit return (don't type the quotes)
   3. If you don't see syntax highlighting, you may have vim mis-installed or are using a language that doesn't have a highlighting file installed by default; search github and you'll probably find something
3. Export the buffer as HTML
   1. Hit escape
   2. Type ":TOhtml" and hit return (don't type the quotes)
   3. This will open a second buffer with the HTML of your text in it. Save it via ":w" and hitting return
4. Open the file in your browser
5. Copy the contents
6. Paste inside iBooks Author

When I did this, I got a text box with the highlighted code in it.