Opened 12 years ago
Closed 9 years ago
#3035 closed task (wontfix)
Create EPUB version of the book
| Reported by: | Matthew Burgess | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | low | Milestone: | Future |
| Component: | Book | Version: | SVN |
| Severity: | minor | Keywords: | |
| Cc: |
Description (last modified by )
The LFS-7.1 release was announced on slashdot and one of the commenters mentioned that it would be nice if we made an EPUB version of the book (http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2712781&cid=39280289). I've previously looked into this, so that I could read LFS on my eBook reader, but other events got in the way, so this ticket is here so I don't drop this again!
Plan of attack for supporting EPUB is:
- Upgrade to Docbook-XSL-1.76.1 by initially importing the 1.76.1 stylesheets into the LFS tree, similar to how the existing snapshot is used
- Ensure there are no regressions in the existing HTML & PDF output formats
- Add customisation layer for EPUB format
- Remove the in-tree version of the XSL distribution, and rely on distribution-installed versions instead.
Attachments (2)
Change History (13)
follow-up: 2 comment:1 by , 12 years ago
comment:2 by , 12 years ago
| Description: | modified (diff) |
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Replying to bdubbs@…:
Can you cut/paste from an ebook to a terminal?
Obviously, if you had an e-book reading app (e.g. Calibre) on your host, then yes :-) But no, I don't think any e-reader hardware supports copying and pasting from it to a PC.
As for the advantage of doing this, I can't think of any other than being able to read the book on an e-reader device, but isn't that reason enough? (It means I'd be able to proof-read LFS on my travels, when I typically don't have my laptop with me). Steps 1, 2 and 4 above though, would have the advantage of ripping the in-tree copy of some snapshotted version of the docbook stylesheets out of our tree and have us use an upstream-released version, in-keeping with LFS' general attempts to keep up-to-date with upstream packages.
comment:3 by , 12 years ago
I don't have a real objection, but was just trying to understand the usefulness. I have a Xoom tablet and can read the html version just fine.
I'll be interested in what you come up with.
follow-up: 5 comment:4 by , 12 years ago
I recently remembered LFS after having tinkered with it a long time ago and decided to come back with some new found free time for another go at it. One of the first things I noticed was the lack of an ePub version.
I thought making one might be a fun project so I commenced to googling to make sure it wasn't already in the works or done elsewhere. Strangely enough I stumbled on this ticket from earlier this month on the exact topic.
Would this be something that a totally new contributor could jump in and help with? If so I would love to get involved and donate some time.
Also apologies in advance if this is not the right place to ask this question.
-MM
follow-up: 6 comment:5 by , 12 years ago
Replying to masenm:
Would this be something that a totally new contributor could jump in and help with? If so I would love to get involved and donate some time.
Definitely! I'll attach the work in progress patch I have. This tackles steps 1 & 2 in the original bug report/feature request. It has 1 known regression in that the index page isn't built at all correctly. If you want to take a stab at fixing that, feel free.
by , 12 years ago
| Attachment: | epub.patch added |
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follow-up: 8 comment:6 by , 12 years ago
Replying to matthew@…:
Replying to masenm:
Would this be something that a totally new contributor could jump in and help with? If so I would love to get involved and donate some time.
Definitely! I'll attach the work in progress patch I have. This tackles steps 1 & 2 in the original bug report/feature request. It has 1 known regression in that the index page isn't built at all correctly. If you want to take a stab at fixing that, feel free.
Thanks for getting back to me :)
I checked out the current dev, applied your patch, and grabbed docboox-xsl-1.76.1. The index page seems fine as html and pdf to me, maybe I'm missing something?
-MM
by , 12 years ago
| Attachment: | rough_epub_makefile.patch added |
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comment:7 by , 12 years ago
Just hacking around to get comfortable with things on a whole ( first experience with XSL, DocBook, and the LFS source ) I managed to get an ugly makefile patch that enables building a readable if unattractive epub file.
That portion was probably to easy for someone who knows what's going on to be on the attack plan but I figured I'd share anyway.
Patch attached.
comment:8 by , 12 years ago
Replying to masenm:
I checked out the current dev, applied your patch, and grabbed docboox-xsl-1.76.1. The index page seems fine as html and pdf to me, maybe I'm missing something?
Maybe it was just my explanation. It's longindex.html that doesn't render properly, but it's linked to from index.html via the 'Index' hyperlink, if that's any clearer.
Good work on the patch so far. The next step would be to create stylesheets/lfs-epub.xsl file, that imports stylesheets/lfs-xsl/lfs-epub.xsl that in turn imports stylesheets/lfs-xsl/docbook-xsl-1.76.1/epub/docbook.xsl. I know the indirection seems a bit OTT but if I remember rightly, there are good reasons for it, at least for chunked and PDF output, so it makes sense to keep things consistent for the new epub stuff.
Once that's in place, we can take a look at customising the output to more closely match the HTML output.
comment:9 by , 12 years ago
| Priority: | normal → low |
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| Severity: | normal → minor |
comment:10 by , 12 years ago
| Milestone: | 7.2 → Future |
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comment:11 by , 9 years ago
| Resolution: | → wontfix |
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| Status: | new → closed |
There has been no activity on this for three years. Marking as wontfix, but if someone wants to do this, then we can reopen it.
I saw that comment, but wonder what benefit it would be. Sure, you could read the book from an e-reader, but you need a regular system to build lfs. Can you cut/paste from an ebook to a terminal?