docbook-apps

I've got the DocBook XSL stylesheet for generating HTML5 output and EPUB3 books
working, at least to beta level. If you are interested in trying it out, you can
download the files from the DocBook SourceForge Files area, under the EPUB3 folder

https://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/files/epub3/

It currently consists of two directories that are added to an existing
docbook-xsl-1.76.1 installation, adding "xhtml5" and "epub3" directories. They are
actually customizations of the xhtml stylesheets, and contain relative path references
to those files, so they should be installed in parallel with the xhtml directory. At
some point I will incorporate them into the normal build so they can appear in a
regular docbook-xsl-snapshot.

Each directory includes a README file to give you more information about how to use
the stylesheets and test your output. Feedback is welcome.

The stylesheets include support for some of the new EPUB features, such as video,
audio, and MathML. However, not all EPUB browsers are up to handling them. See the
README for details.

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
bobs@sagehill.net

Bob,

I'm testing the stylesheets and have run into a couple of things of note:

1) In trying to run the stylesheets on a DB5 instance, make sure you use the regular, and not the ns version of the stylesheets. That said, once I used the regular version, I was able to get the stylesheets to run on a DB5 instance, though there is at least one problem, noted in item 2 below.

2) I'm getting repeated errors from the epub 3 epubcheck saying the following:

ERROR: file.epub/OEBPS/filename.xhtml(1,xxx): Undefined property: section

When I look at the files, I see two issues:
- Immediately after the tag in the xhtml in nearly all of the files, there is a

tag, which is invalid in xhtml. I also see

tags in other places in some of the xhtml files.

- epubcheck doesn't seem to be unhappy about the invalid tags. Its complaint is about instances of elements with the attribute value pair: epub:type="section". These occur primarily (maybe exclusively, I didn't check every instance) on the

tags, though there are some instances of

tags with epub:type set to something else; in those cases, epubcheck doesn't complain.

Originally, I thought this was an artifact of my using DB5, but I tried it out on a book using DB4 and ended up with the same issue.

FYI, I ran the tests on Linux Ubuntu, using 1.76.1 and the b2 version of the stylesheets, and the latest epubcheck 3.0 from their website.

Best Regards,
Dick
-------
XML Press
XML for Technical Communicators
http://xmlpress.net
hamilton@xmlpress.net