Adventures in Modern Publishing

Scott Nesbitt

vs.

Why EPUB?

●Open standard●Widely supported●Reflowable and

resizable text●Perfect for text-

heavy books

Why EPUB?

●Open standard●Widely supported●Reflowable and

resizable text●Perfect for text-

heavy books

Why EPUB?

●Open standard●Widely supported●Reflowable and

resizable text●Perfect for text-

heavy books

Why EPUB?

●Open standard●Widely supported●Reflowable and

resizable text●Perfect for text-

heavy books

Why EPUB?

●Open standard●Widely supported●Reflowable and

resizable text●Perfect for text-

heavy books

Drawbacks of EPUB

●Not meant for books with complex layouts

●Weak support for scientific publishing

●Poor support for linking into and between books

Taking a peek inside an EPUB file

Taking a peek inside an EPUB file

An example contents.opf file

An example toc.ncx file

●DocBook●AsciiDoc●OpenOffice.org

/LibreOffice●Sigil●Booki

●DocBook●AsciiDoc●OpenOffice.org

/LibreOffice●Sigil●Booki

Example of a DocBook file

xsltproc /path/to/docbook-xsl-1.74.0/epub/docbook.xsl docbook.xml

Transforming DocBook to EPUB

●DocBook●AsciiDoc●OpenOffice.org

/LibreOffice●Sigil●Booki

Example of an AsciiDoc file

a2x -f epub --stylesheet myCSS.css myFile.txt

Transforming AsciiDoc to EPUB

●DocBook●AsciiDoc●OpenOffice.org

/LibreOffice●Sigil●Booki

Setting metadata with Writer2EPUB

●DocBook●AsciiDoc●OpenOffice.org

/LibreOffice●Sigil●Booki

Sigil in action

●DocBook●AsciiDoc●OpenOffice.org

/LibreOffice●Sigil●Booki

Writing with Booki

&

Validating online with epubcheck

Validating with Sigil

Final Thoughts

Questions?

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