Mambler

mambler converts a Markdown document (and any local Markdown files it links to) into an AMB archive ready for distribution on the DOS-era MicroM8 platform.

The project wraps the md2txt toolchain, using its Markdown parser and AMA renderer to generate the article content. mambler then packs the rendered output into the AMB binary format, handling large documents by automatically splitting them into multiple AMA files with navigational “Continue” links.

Prerequisites

• uv for running the tool and managing dependencies.
• The sibling md2txt project. pyproject.toml already points uv at ../md2txt.

Usage

uv run mambler.py --title "Your Book Title" --codepage 437 path/to/index.md output.amb

• index.md is the root Markdown file. Any local Markdown links it contains will be followed and bundled automatically.
• --title is optional; when provided the value is embedded in the AMB archive header (truncated to 64 ASCII bytes).
• --codepage controls the 8-bit encoding used for every AMA article (default: 437). Any character that cannot be expressed in the chosen codepage aborts the build with a helpful error so you can pick a better fit.
• If any emitted byte lives in the 0x80–0xFF range, mambler automatically writes a companion UNICODE.MAP file describing the high-half character mapping, mirroring the recommendation in the AMA/AMB specification.
• The command prints the path of the generated AMB file on success.

Development Notes

• Run uv run python -m compileall mambler.py to ensure the script still compiles.
• The md2txt dependency is sourced from the sibling directory; edit that project directly when you need parser/renderer changes.

License

This project inherits the licensing terms set by the repository owner; see the root of the repository for details.