ConTeXt epub workflow

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Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد

2 Jul 2014 2 Jul '14

11:12 p.m.

Dear gang, I have an urgent project that needs three outputs: pdf, epub, and kindle. The formatting needs are pretty basic. In your experience: What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing? Should I start with markdown and then generate context and epub (then convert epub=>kindle I presume)? Or does one context file with pdf and epub outputs work well? Many years ago I did some documents in ConTeXt with both print and screen pdfs from a single source. Can we do the latter in ConTeXt now? Does anyone have any examples? According to http://wiki.contextgarden.net/epub There is no support for graphics in ConTeXt epub output. Are there workarounds? In any case, all advice for an efficient workflow for this project will be greatly appreciated! Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523

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Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد

2 Jul 2 Jul

11:18 p.m.

On Wed, 02 Jul 2014 15:12:10 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

...

What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing? Should I start with markdown and then generate context and epub (then convert epub=>kindle I presume)? Or does one context file with pdf and epub outputs work well? Many years ago I did some documents in ConTeXt with both print and screen pdfs from a single source. Can we do the latter in ConTeXt now? ^^^^^^^^

Er, Can we do the *former* in ConTeXt? Viz., generate both pdf and epub from a single source. Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523

Hans Hagen

3 Jul 3 Jul

10:48 a.m.

On 7/2/2014 11:18 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

...

On Wed, 02 Jul 2014 15:12:10 -0600, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

...
What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing? Should I start with markdown and then generate context and epub (then convert epub=>kindle I presume)? Or does one context file with pdf and epub outputs work well? Many years ago I did some documents in ConTeXt with both print and screen pdfs from a single source. Can we do the latter in ConTeXt now? ^^^^^^^^

Er, Can we do the *former* in ConTeXt? Viz., generate both pdf and epub from a single source.

you can generate a pdf + export in xml from the same source; if you know what epub you want (and how it should look like) you can use a combination of transformation and css the main boundary condition is that you tag wisely (and i think this is not an issue in your case as you always tag); there is some deduction built in with respect to where paragraphs begin and end so often it helps to tag paragraphs too (depends on the document) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Henning Hraban Ramm

5:13 a.m.

Am 2014-07-03 um 03:12 schrieb Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد :

...

What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing? Should I start with markdown and then generate context and epub (then convert epub=>kindle I presume)? Or does one context file with pdf and epub outputs work well? Many years ago I did some documents in ConTeXt with both print and screen pdfs from a single source. Can we do the latter in ConTeXt now? Does anyone have any examples?

ConTeXt’s ePub output is not usable without conversion (to XHTML). Its XML output is even corrupt if you try with a project structure. You have to mark every structure like \start/\stopparagraph - very tedious! Some other workflow is probably more efficient. That said, I recently completed an ePub from a ConTeXt source, but I can’t recommend it, there was a lot of manual tweaking involved. Greetlings, Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

Aditya Mahajan

5:42 a.m.

On Wed, 2 Jul 2014, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

...

Dear gang,

I have an urgent project that needs three outputs: pdf, epub, and kindle. The formatting needs are pretty basic. In your experience:

What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing? Should I start with markdown and then generate context and epub (then convert epub=>kindle I presume)? Or does one context file with pdf and epub outputs work well?

If you are short on time and your formatting needs are basic, I would suggest that you start with markdown as your input format and use pandoc to convert it to epub and context. There are various tools to do epub to kindle conversion. Markdown in a very primitive input format. For anything non-trivial (multiple types of floats, multiple types of emphasis, etc.) you have to resort to some sort of pre-processing of input. Pandoc is the only tool that does Markdown to ConTeXt conversion. There are more tools for Markdown to LaTeX conversion. The ConTeXt markup generated by pandoc is not ideal (\bf, \em, etc instead of semantic markup); it is possible to change the output, but you need to learn how to program in Haskell. You can start with ConTeXt and generate epub. However, ConTeXt generates XML+CSS rather than "pure" XHTML. Most browsers can handle XML+CSS, but most (all?) epub readers cannot. So, the output is not usable without some post-processing (this might have changed, I haven't tested ConTeXt epub in a year or so). In the long run, I think that the "easiest" way to generate multiple output formats for non-trivial input text is to use XML as your input format. Aditya

Gour

9:14 a.m.

Aditya Mahajan writes:

...

In the long run, I think that the "easiest" way to generate multiple output formats for non-trivial input text is to use XML as your input format.

Although I do not like XML-based format as input for writing, I wonder how is ConTeXt handling XML format *today* ? Sincerely, Gour -- He who is satisfied with gain which comes of its own accord, who is free from duality and does not envy, who is steady in both success and failure, is never entangled, although performing actions.

Hans Hagen

10:23 a.m.

On 7/3/2014 9:14 AM, Gour wrote:

...

Aditya Mahajan writes:

...
In the long run, I think that the "easiest" way to generate multiple output formats for non-trivial input text is to use XML as your input format.

Although I do not like XML-based format as input for writing, I wonder how is ConTeXt handling XML format *today* ?

there are manuals (mkiv) and examples in in the test suite mkvi xml support is completely different (tree based filtering) from mkii (sequential, streaming) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Keith McKay

9:41 a.m.

Dear Idris If your document is simple I would consider the following workflow. I use this method for simple novels to produce both ePubs and Kindle output relatively quickly from a word docs which authors send me. Load the word doc into OpenOffice and save in OpenOffice format (.odt). Using the Writer2ePub extension in OpenOffice convert to ePub. You will get a reasonable looking ePub if you have taken a little care to style the document beforehand. Load the ePub into Sigil and tidy up the ePub. I Usually split the ePub into Chapters, embed fonts and add any images where I want them to go at this point. Once you are happy with the ePub you should test it on the various eReaders to make sure it looks as expected, don't be surprised to see differences and you may have to create different ePubs for the different eReaders. I have to do that for iBooks and Kobo eReaders. The idpf have an online ePub validator for ePubs which you should use to check for ePub standard compliance. Adobe Digital Editions is a useful tool here. You can now convert it into Kindle format using Kindle Previewer. If it requires changes, do that in Sigil and then run through Kindle Previewer again. To get pdf output I have been experimenting with pandoc quite recently with some success. I take the ePub and rename as a zip file and open it to expose its directory structure. Using pandoc I convert it to ConText code and tidy up a wee bit but, on the whole, Pandoc gives a not bad conversion even if images are present. Again you will probably have to tidy up the Context code and play about with fonts etc. This workflow looks a wee bit complicated but it does work well once you get the hang of it. I had originally tried using the Context to ePub but as previous correspondents have intimated you only get xml output rather than xhtml which is what eReaders require. If you need help feel free to email me privately. Best Wishes Keith McKay Hamilton, Scotland On 02/07/2014 22:12, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

...

Dear gang,

I have an urgent project that needs three outputs: pdf, epub, and kindle. The formatting needs are pretty basic. In your experience:

What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing? Should I start with markdown and then generate context and epub (then convert epub=>kindle I presume)? Or does one context file with pdf and epub outputs work well? Many years ago I did some documents in ConTeXt with both print and screen pdfs from a single source. Can we do the latter in ConTeXt now? Does anyone have any examples?

According to

http://wiki.contextgarden.net/epub

There is no support for graphics in ConTeXt epub output. Are there workarounds?

In any case, all advice for an efficient workflow for this project will be greatly appreciated!

Best wishes Idris

Hans Hagen

10:45 a.m.

On 7/2/2014 11:12 PM, Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

...

Dear gang,

I have an urgent project that needs three outputs: pdf, epub, and kindle. The formatting needs are pretty basic. In your experience:

What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing? Should I start with markdown and then generate context and epub (then convert epub=>kindle I presume)? Or does one context file with pdf and epub outputs work well? Many years ago I did some documents in ConTeXt with both print and screen pdfs from a single source. Can we do the latter in ConTeXt now? Does anyone have any examples?

the export is xml reflecting the structure etc and as the whole idea of xml is that it can be transformed one can map that to anything needed there is mtx-epub but i need to look into that again as one problem with epub is that all these substandards and devices differ a bit context can produce xhtml which then with a css can be viewed in full blown browsers (i used mozilla) although for some constructs (like hyperlinks) html like thingies have to be used (not part of css) as xhtml is not becoming the standard it should be, i'm considering a variant output where everything is a <div> or <span> which then even more moves things to css (outputting html tags makes no sense as we then would end up in tag abuse due to the limited number of tags)

...

According to

http://wiki.contextgarden.net/epub

There is no support for graphics in ConTeXt epub output. Are there workarounds?

all relevant info is embedded and output (with a css mapping to graphics that one can supply as png/jpg/whatever)

...

In any case, all advice for an efficient workflow for this project will be greatly appreciated!

(luigi is working on some stuff that transforms the export into wiki pages for the garden, e.g. the new publications manual) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Jan Tosovsky

8:51 p.m.

On 2014-07-02 Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد wrote:

...

I have an urgent project that needs three outputs: pdf, epub, and kindle. The formatting needs are pretty basic.

What is the recommended, more efficient workflow for this sort of thing?

For multichannel publishing it is a must to keep your data in semantically rich form. I strongly recommend switching from non structural macros to self-validating XML markup (DocBook, DITA). This 'Single Source Publishing' approach opens new possibilities. Besides ePUB (you can convert/degrade it to MOBI in Calibre) and PDF you can get a lot of other outputs out-of-the-box (Webhelp, CHM, JavaHelp, LaTeX, ConTeXt, ...). But to be honest, both setting up and customizing the workflow require a specific skill set so it is IMHO not well suited for 'urgent' projects... Btw, there is a special user group with many related topics on linked.in: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Ebooks-Elearning-Epub-3-HTML5-2414597?gid=24 14597 Regards, Jan

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participants (7)

Aditya Mahajan
Gour
Hans Hagen
Henning Hraban Ramm
Idris Samawi Hamid ادريس سماوي حامد
Jan Tosovsky
Keith McKay