unipress

article

A single-column paper — A4 (default) or US Letter, continuous prose, no chapters. Clean typography, symmetric margins tuned for a comfortable ~75-character measure, an inline title block (no separate title page), and unnumbered section headings. It's the natural shape for turning a folder of notes, a report, a proposal, or an essay into one shareable PDF — and the default when you run unipress compile . on a loose folder of markdown.

The same @unipress/book foundation drives article, book, monograph, and report. The difference is the genre: article sets book.kind: article, which renders continuous prose instead of chapters.

Scaffold

unipress create my-paper --template article --title "On Systems" --author "Your Name"
cd my-paper
unipress compile . --format pdf --out my-paper.pdf

Or skip the scaffold entirely — point unipress at any folder of markdown and let it generate the config:

cd my-notes        # a folder of .md files
unipress compile . --yes

What you get

my-paper/
├── document.yml          pinned to @unipress/book@<version>; book.kind: article, trim: a4
├── content/
│   ├── 01-introduction.md
│   └── 02-main.md
└── README.md

Each file in content/ is a section, ordered by its number prefix. The file's # H1 is the section heading; ## / ### are subsections. Sections flow continuously — no page break before each one.

When to pick article over book

  • The writing is continuous prose, not divided into chapters.
  • You want a full page of paper (A4 / Letter), not a small book trim.
  • A title at the top is enough — no separate title page, copyright page, or cover.
  • It's a report, proposal, essay, set of notes, or design doc rather than a book.

For chaptered, bindable, prose-driven work, use book (trade-6×9) or monograph (royal-octavo). For data-driven Excel/Word output, use data-report or directory.

document.yml fields

Same book: shape as the other genres (see book), with these article-specific defaults and knobs:

Fieldarticle default / note
book.kindarticle — selects the single-column genre
book.trima4 (or letter for US/Canada)
book.structure.tocfalse — a paper has no TOC by default; set true for a longer one
book.structure.numberHeadingsfalse — set true for numbered sections (1, 1.1, 1.1.1)
book.title / subtitle / authorrender as a centered title block atop page 1; clear the title to omit the block entirely

Cover artwork, title pages, copyright pages, and chapter numbering don't apply to the article genre.

Common customizations

  • US Letter instead of A4: book.trim: letter.
  • Numbered sections: book.structure: { numberHeadings: true } → 1, 1.1, 1.1.1.
  • Add a table of contents: book.structure: { toc: true, tocDepth: 2 }.
  • Different body font: book.typography.bodyFont: ["EB Garamond", "Georgia"].
  • Tighter or looser measure: override book.trim with an object — { preset: a4, margins: { inside: 40mm, outside: 40mm } } — for narrower text.
  • Grow into a book: remove book.kind (and set a book trim like trade-6x9), or start fresh with unipress create --template book.

Foundation reference

@unipress/book — see the foundation's README: foundations/book/README.md.