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Sorry, no info concerning ConTeXT.

You don't have to use proprietary tools. An easy way to create ebooks from Markdown files (or other sources) is Pandoc. https://pandoc.org/

I produce all of my ebooks in this way. In most cases they validate without errors. If there are some errors though I use Calibre to fix them manually. Thanks, I didn't think of Pandoc, I'll give it a try. In the past, I have tried to create some simple content (slides) with Markdown, but my conclusion was that if you know TeX, it doesn't make sense to use Markdown :)

Perhaps this is a silly question (excuse my ignorance about the topic): what if you want to add some stylistic touches to your ebooks, such as initials? Or Non-breaking spaces? How about adding, say, a text box with a different background and a smaller font?

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Or fine control page numbering, headers, footnotes, ligatures, or the spacing between paragraphs, or center a separator as above? Do you need to modify the generated CSS for that, or would ConTeXt (or Pandoc) allow you to take care of (some of) those things?

Nicola

For Pandoc: Some things can be tweaked with pandoc, but for anything that is a bit more advanced you'll probably need a custom CSS. For special content you can use spans and divs. In your custom CSS you can define how those elements should be rendered. Sounds pretty similar to what Hans wrote in his response. Probably the main questions are if you prefer to work with pandoc markdown or with ConTeXt sources, and if you need additional output formats. Denis

On 2019-12-10, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:

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Am 2019-12-10 um 16:53 schrieb Denis Maier :

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Perhaps this is a silly question (excuse my ignorance about the topic): what if you want to add some stylistic touches to your ebooks, such as initials? Or Non-breaking spaces? How about adding, say, a text box with a different background and a smaller font?

Or fine control page numbering, headers, footnotes, ligatures, or the spacing between paragraphs, or center a separator as above? Do you need to modify the generated CSS for that, or would ConTeXt (or Pandoc) allow you to take care of (some of) those things?

Nicola

For Pandoc: Some things can be tweaked with pandoc, but for anything that is a bit more advanced you'll probably need a custom CSS. For special content you can use spans and divs. In your custom CSS you can define how those elements should be rendered. Sounds pretty similar to what Hans wrote in his response. Probably the main questions are if you prefer to work with pandoc markdown or with ConTeXt sources, and if you need additional output formats.

The current need is only for epub. In any case, I'd like to have a single source of truth for the content. I have experimented a bit with Pandoc and, in fact, it can generate an .epub file that can be imported by iBooks Author and converted with kindlegen. As for the style, it seems that modifying the CSS gives the most control and can't be avoided for advanced tweaks, even if I'd use ConTeXt. As for ConTeXt, I have tried the latest beta with: context mybook.tex mtxrun --script epub --make mybook This, among the rest, creates an .epub file, which unfortunately the above mentioned tools do not like (maybe, that output is still experimental?). I'll try to follow the more complex steps at https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Epub_Sample.

The problem is that custom CSS must be tuned for every single ePub reader (app or device), it’s like the browser wars. Most readers interprete only a strange subset of CSS2, it’s completely unreliable in my (limited) experience.

That's... sad.

Have a look at https://wiki.contextgarden.net/ePub WRT ePub ot of ConTeXt, also at the old docs; unfortunately I never finished writing these pages, but I must review my ePub workflow soon-ish.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot! Nicola

Am 10.12.19 um 08:50 schrieb Nicola:

On 2019-12-10, Jan U. Hasecke wrote:

Thanks, I didn't think of Pandoc, I'll give it a try. In the past, I have tried to create some simple content (slides) with Markdown, but my conclusion was that if you know TeX, it doesn't make sense to use Markdown :)

Perhaps this is a silly question (excuse my ignorance about the topic): what if you want to add some stylistic touches to your ebooks, such as initials? Or Non-breaking spaces? How about adding, say, a text box with a different background and a smaller font?

Ebooks are xhtml so styles are limited to the capabilities of css. I fear that initials has to be left flowing images.

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Or fine control page numbering, headers, footnotes, ligatures, or the spacing between paragraphs, or center a separator as above? Do you need to modify the generated CSS for that, or would ConTeXt (or Pandoc) allow you to take care of (some of) those things?

No page numbers in E-Books and I would avoid headers. Footnotes are endnotes. Ligatures might be possible if directly inserted, sorry never tried this in an ebook. You can modify the css to achieve what is possible in xhtml, though. I have to confess that I never managed to create an ebook with context right aways. AFAIK, please correct me Hans, you end up with an epub folder not the compressed epub itself. I would guess that it is a good thing if you want to postprocess the book manually by editing content files or css. What I can say about epub generally is: It's better to avoid fancy styling at all and use the default fonts and styles of the ebook devices. HTH juh

On 12/11/2019 01:10, Jan U. Hasecke wrote:

Ebooks are xhtml so styles are limited to the capabilities of css. I fear that initials has to be left flowing images.

Sorry, but if I understand what you mean by initials, that is not the case. Consider .lettrine>p::first-letter {     font-size    : 3rem ;     line-height  : 0 ; } This produces a raised large character at the beginning of a paragraph. It does not automatically accommodate leading quotation marks and such, so some tuning may be needed, and of course you have to tag the paragraph with the appropriate class. Similarly, you can set the first line of a paragraph to smallcap. -- Rik

On 12/11/2019 10:45, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:

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Am 2019-12-11 um 16:17 schrieb Rik Kabel :

On 12/11/2019 01:10, Jan U. Hasecke wrote:

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Ebooks are xhtml so styles are limited to the capabilities of css. I fear that initials has to be left flowing images.

Sorry, but if I understand what you mean by initials, that is not the case. Consider

.lettrine>p::first-letter { font-size : 3rem ; line-height : 0 ; } This might be the right CSS instruction, but when I tried that last year, only one reader interpreted it correctly. and ::* are badly supported. Best, Hraban

Works fine with Calibre, I have not used any other readers. Is this an epub 2/3 issue? -- Rik

On 2019-12-10, Hans Hagen wrote:

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What is the current status of epub support in ConTeXt?

I have never followed ConTeXt's development on the XML front too closely, but recently I have been asked to help format a text-only manuscript for publishing on platforms such as Kindle or Apple Books Store. Can ConTeXt be used (or perhaps even recommended) for that? Or would I have better luck with the proprietary tools (Kindle Create, iBooks Author)? context has an xml export (a few variants) and one can start from that ... in the end it all boils down to some css (depends on the book i guess) and tagged content (one can use the divs and spans output or

On 12/9/2019 10:13 PM, Nicola wrote: transform the xml to whatever wanted) ... for more complex setups i think there are no generic solutions (unless all books should look alike)

Ok, I imagined that things were like that, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for confirming my impression. Nicola