Hi everyone,
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced myself as a developer obsessed with typography and e-book formatting. Today, I wanted to share what Ive been building and ask for this community's brutally honest technical feedback.
Like many of you, I was frustrated by writing software that either requires a monthly subscription, locks you into a Mac ecosystem (like Vellum), or forces you to install heavy dependencies like Pandoc just to get a clean DOCX or EPUB export.
So, I built Mergen Ink. It's an offline-first, native writing app for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
I used Tauri 2 (Rust + SvelteKit) to keep it extremely lightweight. But the part I'm most proud ofand the reason I'm posting hereis the export engine.
I completely ditched Pandoc. Instead, I wrote a custom AST-to-EPUB/DOCX parser entirely in Rust. It generates EPUBs and DOCX files entirely locally, in milliseconds, without requiring the user to install anything else.
Under the hood:
100% Offline & Local: Everything is saved to a local SQLite database on your machine.
Zero External Dependencies: The Rust engine handles all the rich-text conversions natively.
Just released v0.1.10: Added full i18n support and a brand new distraction-free UI.
Free & No Subscriptions: It's a pay-once, own-forever model (currently completely free).
Since this community knows EPUB structures, metadata handling, and e-reader CSS quirks better than anyone else on the internet, I would be honored if some of you could export a test EPUB from the app, unzip it, and "roast" the output.
Are the HTML/CSS structures clean enough?
Is there any specific metadata handling I should improve for older e-readers?
You can grab the app here: https://mergen.ink
Im the sole developer, so any technical feedback on the generated EPUB structures would be immensely helpful. I am ready to take notes!
Cheers,
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced myself as a developer obsessed with typography and e-book formatting. Today, I wanted to share what Ive been building and ask for this community's brutally honest technical feedback.
Like many of you, I was frustrated by writing software that either requires a monthly subscription, locks you into a Mac ecosystem (like Vellum), or forces you to install heavy dependencies like Pandoc just to get a clean DOCX or EPUB export.
So, I built Mergen Ink. It's an offline-first, native writing app for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
I used Tauri 2 (Rust + SvelteKit) to keep it extremely lightweight. But the part I'm most proud ofand the reason I'm posting hereis the export engine.
I completely ditched Pandoc. Instead, I wrote a custom AST-to-EPUB/DOCX parser entirely in Rust. It generates EPUBs and DOCX files entirely locally, in milliseconds, without requiring the user to install anything else.
Under the hood:
100% Offline & Local: Everything is saved to a local SQLite database on your machine.
Zero External Dependencies: The Rust engine handles all the rich-text conversions natively.
Just released v0.1.10: Added full i18n support and a brand new distraction-free UI.
Free & No Subscriptions: It's a pay-once, own-forever model (currently completely free).
Since this community knows EPUB structures, metadata handling, and e-reader CSS quirks better than anyone else on the internet, I would be honored if some of you could export a test EPUB from the app, unzip it, and "roast" the output.
Are the HTML/CSS structures clean enough?
Is there any specific metadata handling I should improve for older e-readers?
You can grab the app here: https://mergen.ink
Im the sole developer, so any technical feedback on the generated EPUB structures would be immensely helpful. I am ready to take notes!
Cheers,
