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Hi Greg,<br>
<br>
On 1/29/2012 10:39 AM, Gregory Pittman wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4F25844B.9060903@yahoo.com" type="cite">In
regard to your project, it's worth being aware of PressBooks:
<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://pressbooks.com/about">http://pressbooks.com/about</a>
<br>
<br>
which is now open to anyone. It's based on WordPress, but allows
for the easy creation of ePub and PDFs, and since your work is
also published a blog-like format, you also get HTML. Once you
have ePub, you can easily use calibre to convert to Kindle format.
I was hoping that eventually we might see an ability to interact
with Scribus via IDXML files, once importing becomes possible into
Scribus and the export from PressBooks is usable.
<br>
<br>
My experience using PressBooks has been that it's easy enough to
work with, but getting things where you want them on the page (the
layout) can be challenging. Sometimes getting the PDF to work
doesn't for ePub and vice versa.
<br>
<br>
A recently added feature at PressBooks is an ability to import
your own CSS files, but so far there hasn't been documentation of
the structure of those, and the ones used natively by PressBooks
are not accessible.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Thanks for the pointers and suggestions. I'll take a look at them.<br>
<br>
Regarding pressbooks: I'm interested in where they seem to be
heading. I like several things about it:<br>
<ol>
<li>It's based on a robust content management system, making it
intriguing as a collaboration platform.</li>
<li>It offers the ability to target print, web, ebooks from the
same source, which is really important. We're hearing a lot
about tools that create electronic books, but that's a single
audience. I want my writing in front of people who read paper
too.<br>
</li>
</ol>
A few months ago, I opened an account and spent some time
experimenting with it and eventually concluded that it didn't meet
my needs very well. This was mostly because I like the ability to be
more hands on.<br>
<br>
My current preparation system involves LyX, LaTeX, and Scribus and
I've been pretty happy with that. (Ecstatic, actually. It also lets
you target print, web, and ebooks and take advantage of the
strengths of each. But I should probably mention that I write my own
document classes for LaTeX and custom layout files for LyX. I also
code my own HTML and Javascript, which means I'm very comfortable
getting into the guts. I appreciate this approach isn't for
everyone.)<br>
<br>
I'll have to look at what they offer in terms of custom CSS, that
might be the game changer. My interest with this add-in for Scribus
is creating an easy way for people to develop their own CSS in a
visual environment, so that you can design it rather than coding it.<br>
<br>
For a while I've been trying to put together a toolkit, which would
involve the following:<br>
<ul>
<li>Scribus templates with style names matching the most common
ePub/Kindle tags</li>
<li>an export plugin capable of taking styles in the document and
generating CSS from them</li>
<li>a tool for producing terse HTML with matching tags (I've been
using LyX for this purpose)<br>
</li>
</ul>
With the CSS and HTML in hand, you have all the elements needed for
the eBook. (You can also attach JavaScript, which I've been using
for interaction.) It all comes together pretty nicely<br>
<br>
While researching out the plugin, though, I've gotten pretty
interested in what might be done natively from within Scribus.
Hearing about what Claudia is working on gets me even more excited.
I think there's some pretty good potential to create something very
powerful. Following Jose's hints, I've already a basic CSS exporter
that does everything that I was hoping for. Going the next step and
coding ePub export doesn't seem nearly as painful as I thought it
would be.<br>
<br>
But ... one step at a time.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Rob<br>
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