docbook-apps

I've been playing with the .epub stylesheets in
anticipation of putting my book into epub form.

I've been able to build an epub book, and am now
looking into customizing the XSL and working with
CSS to get it to look the way I want.

Can anyone recommend any resources, articles, etc.,
that they have found useful in working with epub?

Thanks,
Dick Hamilton
rlhamilton@frii.com
---------------------------------
XML Press
XML for Technical Communicators
http://xmlpress.net
(970) 231-3624

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Dick Hamilton <rlhamilton@frii.com> wrote:
> I've been playing with the .epub stylesheets in
> anticipation of putting my book into epub form.
>
> I've been able to build an epub book, and am now
> looking into customizing the XSL and working with
> CSS to get it to look the way I want.
>
> Can anyone recommend any resources, articles, etc.,
> that they have found useful in working with epub?

I'd be delighted to answer any questions you have about ePub. As far
as CSS: Think mobile CSS, it'll all apply almost directly.


Keith

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Dick Hamilton <rlhamilton@frii.com> wrote:
> Can anyone recommend any resources, articles, etc.,
> that they have found useful in working with epub?

= ePub, specifically

The IDPF (http://www.openebook.org/) developed the ePub specs. They
are fairly reasonable as specs go:
* OPF (how to name the files): http://idpf.org/2007/opf/OPF_2.0_final_spec.html
* OCF (how to zip the files): http://www.idpf.org/ocf/ocf1.0/download/ocf10.htm
* OPS (the content of the files):
http://idpf.org/2007/ops/OPS_2.0_final_spec.html

= Formats, generally

A more high-level overview of the formats from Liza Daly is here:
http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/04/ebook-format-primer.html

= Creating ePubs

Bob DuCharme has a nice overview of creating ePubs from scratch:
http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/2008/03/creating-epub-files.html
He points to two other resources ".epub eBooks Tutorial"
(http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/tutorial.asp) and "Epub Format
Construction Guide"
(http://www.hxa7241.org/articles/content/epub-guide_hxa7241_2007.html).
The most comprehensive guide is Liza's "Build a digital book with
EPUB"[sic] on IBM Developerworks
(http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-epubtut.html).

= ePub readers

O'Reilly just announced its support and hosting of the superb, open
source Bookworm ePub reader (http://bookworm.oreilly.com/) (Liza's
work): http://toc.oreilly.com/2009/02/bookworm-now-part-of-oreilly-labs.html

Azardi is a project trying to develop a reference-quality ePub reader:
http://www.infogridpacific.com/igp/AZARDI/

Adobe Digital Editions is a free (beer) ePub Reader used by the Sony
Reader & many consumers:
http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/

Lexcycle's Stanza App (http://www.lexcycle.com/) on the iPhone is by
far the most ubiquitous ePub reader (with hundreds of thousands,
millions? of downloads), but the Sony Reader also supports ePub as
well the upcoming Plastic Logic reader (2010).

= ePub news

The MobileRead Forums are where a lot of folks interested in
electronic books hang out (I don't): http://www.mobileread.com/forums/

TeleRead (http://www.teleread.org/blog/) and the TOC Blog
(http://toc.oreilly.com/) are the place to watch for news (less
technical).

Liza's blog's ePub category has quite a bit of meaty stuff to chew on:
http://blog.threepress.org/category/epub/

= ePub validation

Use epubcheck (http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/) to validate your
ePub documents or Liza's web form of the same
(http://threepress.org/tools/)

= ePub tools & alphas

Calibre is doing some alpha work on converting between formats:
http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/

Liza has tools for using DocBook-XSL's ePub stylesheets in Python and
also doing TEI->ePub: http://code.google.com/p/epub-tools/

Liza (spotting a theme?) just released an alpha of a pure-JavaScript
ePub reader: http://blog.threepress.org/2009/02/09/introducing-epubjs/

= Mailing lists

Mailing lists include ePub-Community
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/epub-community/) and the brand-new
ePub-interop (http://groups.google.com/group/epub-interop) for reader
implementers.

HTH,
Keith