Create EPUB version of the book

[Matthew Burgess]

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:

1. 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
2. Ensure there are no regressions in the existing HTML & PDF output formats
3. Add customisation layer for EPUB format
4. Remove the in-tree version of the XSL distribution, and rely on distribution-installed versions instead.

[bdubbs@…]

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?

[Matthew Burgess]

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.