This directory contains all of the chapters in the book. Each chapter has its own directory, with a corresponding .md file (eg Chapter 4 has chapter4/chapter4.md) as well as any additional files like images.
To be included in the book, each chapter needs to be added to the structure file in the top level of the repo.
Basic setup for working with Pandoc and TeX.
To work on the book, you need to install Nix.
On macOS, first install the XCode command-line tools:
xcode-select --install
the install Nix with:
sh <(curl https://nixos.org/nix/install) --darwin-use-unencrypted-nix-store-volume
On Linux, install Nix with:
curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh
Once you have Nix installed, run nix-shell to get access to Pandoc, LaTeX and all the other tools you need. The first time you run nix-shell will take a while to finish as it downloads and installs all the packages you need.
Once inside the Nix shell, you'll have access to Pandoc and you'll be able to generate PDFs with XeTeX. The to-pdf script can do this for a single chapter in the book directory:
[nix-shell:~/Documents/RL-book]$ bin/to-pdf chapter0
Converting book/chapter0/chapter0.md to book/chapter0/chapter0.pdf
You can also generate the entire book to a file called book.pdf:
[nix-shell:~/Documents/RL-book]$ bin/to-pdf
Combining
book/chapter0/chapter0.md
book/chapter2/chapter2.md
book/chapter3/chapter3.md
book/chapter4/chapter4.md
book/chapter5/chapter5.md
into book.pdf
Note that this can take a little while (10–20 seconds for chapters 0–5).
We can generate an index with the --index flag:
bin/to-pdf chapter1 --indexThis requires running xelatex twice, so it'll take longer to generate the PDF. Index terms are defined within the text with the \index command.
We can define labels for chapters and headings:
# Overview {#sec:overview}
## Learning Reinforcement Learning {#sec:learning-rl}
Because of limitations with the system I'm using for managing internal references, labels for sections and chapters always have to start with sec:.
Once you have defined a label for a section or chapter, you can reference its number as follows:
Take a look at Chapter [-@sec:mdp].
Take a look at Chapter 3.
For sections, you can also use:
Take a look at [@sec:learning-rl].
Take a look at sec. 1.
(The [-@sec:foo] syntax drops the "sec. " text.)
For references across chapters to render correctly, you have to compile the entire book PDF (following the instructions above).