On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Hans Hagen wrote:

Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:

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Am 2009-12-02 um 18:03 schrieb Otared Kavian:

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For those on the list who didn't see this thread on XeTeX mailing list: How about ConTeXt and mkiv?

Hm, your subject is a bit misleading - I thought you wanted to *create eBooks* using TeX. That would be much more useful... Even if some eBook devices can display PDF, AFAIK we still cannot create the re-flowable variant (needs a XML stream, see other discussions about tagged PDF or PDF/X).

In one of the latest c't (German computer magazine) there was a nice article on creating eBooks in Epub format (HTML based). Even if I don't intend to buy an eBook device, it made me think again about using another input language than TeX to create HTML, ConTeXt and whatever from one source. Knut Lickert recently gave a talk on "Creole for LaTeX" (Creole is an unified Wiki markup syntax), I'm still planning to use ReStructuredText (Python's documentation syntax) - note to self: finally adapt that LaTeX output filter to ConTeXt!

Processing epub is rather trivial. On my machine I have a sample style and processign boils down to:

context --ctx=x-epub --autopdf dickens-a-tale-of-two-cities.epub

However, the main reason for not posting the style is that I have not much reason currently to work on it. Also, as epub is effectively just packaged html, one ends up with styles for each specific book ... you just don't want to know what mess is hidden in those epub files (for example i ran into using h2 for the chapter numbers and h3 for the chapter title).

Maybe epub as backend is a more interesting idea: given (some kind of gentle ) tex file one can produce an epub file as result. -- luigi

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 2:10 PM, William Adams wrote:

On Dec 3, 2009, at 4:12 AM, luigi scarso wrote:

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Maybe epub as backend is a more interesting  idea: given (some kind of gentle )  tex file one can produce an epub file as  result.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Not really. With mkiv you can typeset xml files as pdf, so you can also (using modes) convert it to xhtml (we have lua now). Writing a css is not a problem, and you can also manage fonts -- after all you know them because you need for pdf . Other infos are trivial.

Following this route you can also make an (x)html for a WOFF enable browser like firefox 2.6 beta -- it's almost the same of epub, after all Cfr people.mozilla.com/~jkew/woff/woff-spec-latest.html Of course none can say that epub is like pdf from a typographical point of view but for low energy devices can be better epub than pdf. -- luigi

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 2:52 PM, William Adams wrote:

On Dec 3, 2009, at 8:22 AM, luigi scarso wrote:

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Not really.

My apologies, lost the thread of the discussion. I agree w/ this.

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With mkiv you can typeset xml files as pdf, so you can also (using modes) convert it to xhtml (we have lua now). Writing a css is not a problem, and you can also manage fonts -- after all you know them because you need for pdf . Other  infos are trivial.

Following this route you can also make an (x)html for a WOFF enable browser like firefox 2.6 beta -- it's almost the same of epub, after all Cfr people.mozilla.com/~jkew/woff/woff-spec-latest.html

Of course none can say that epub is like pdf from a typographical point of view but for low energy devices can be better epub than pdf.

I'll grant that .epub can be more flexible and more appropriate, but one has to keep in mind that one is giving up quite a bit of typographical quality, and that one is at the mercy of the h&j of the viewing program and I've yet to see one which puts more than a minimal / brain-dead / greedy --- set as much as will fit on the current line and then break to the next algorithm in. It's true of course. anyway have you seen http://people.mozilla.com/~jkew/woff/woff-spec-latest.html http://people.mozilla.com/~jkew/woff/ ?

I was at guit meeting this year, and Kaveh too, and I have seen his device with TeX. It's really cool: it's not a simple dvi reader, it's a TeX implementation+dvi reader so one can exchange tex snippets with similar devices Next release will use xetex. I have some experience to port pdf in similar devices too (it was 3years ago, too much time ago, really) and in the end I'm convinced that (x)html is still the first choice. -- luigi

Am 2009-12-05 um 15:58 schrieb Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد:

On Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:17:22 -0700, Henning Hraban Ramm

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wrote:

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Even if I don't intend to buy an eBook device, it made me think again about using another input language than TeX to create HTML, ConTeXt and whatever from one source.

Pandoc has this aim, and supports ConTeXt to some degree.

Thanks for the hint, I'll try it (hopefully it can do what I need without me learning Haskell). Grüßlinge vom Südsee! Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)