DocBook-XSL 1.76.0 released for testing with many EPUB enhancements
Version 1.76.0 of the open source DocBook-XSL stylesheets, which convert DocBook documents into a variety of outputs including PDF, HTML, and EPUB, has just been released into the wild for testing. It...
View ArticleEpubcheck developer build with check for unmanifested files: available for...
Apple’s iBookstore requirement that all files in the .epub must be listed in the OPF manifest has caused a lot of headaches for content producers. There’s no such requirement in the actual EPUB 2.0...
View Articleepubcheck 1.1 release candidate 1 available for testing
Threepress has contributed patches to a number of significant bugs and improvements to epubcheck recently: Error message generated for valid ISO8601 date [BUG] Checking for unused files which are not...
View ArticleEpubCheck 1.1 released
EpubCheck, the open-source tool widely used for checking and testing EPUB files, has been updated to release 1.1. The release is available on Google Code. Note: There is a new jar file in lib/. Ensure...
View ArticleRunning epubcheck on your computer
epubcheck is a valuable tool for anyone working with EPUB documents. Many beginners choose to start using it via the online validator at http://threepress.org/document/epub-validate, but it’s a mistake...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Three for Threepress
We’re very excited to have a new team member for Ibis Reader. Ned Batchelder will be working with us in the weeks ahead to update and improve Ibis, and to add some features that have been requested by...
View ArticleEPUB export improvements in Apple Pages 4.0.5
I haven’t been checking each incremental release so it’s possible this landed earlier, but the current version of Apple Pages has improved the semantics of their EPUB export. The original template now...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can an author create an EPUB file using normal tools? Part 1: Pages
Yes, but it may require a Mac. The IDPF board met on the last day of the Digital Book 2011 conference at Book Expo America. One of our topics for discussion was what the IDPF as an organization should...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can an author create an EPUB using normal tools? Part 2: Scrivener
This is part two of a series on using author-friendly word-processing tools with native EPUB export. Part 1 was about Apple Pages. Part two: Scrivener I first became aware of Scrivener’s support for...
View ArticleCaveman: An HTML5 cache manifest validator
Over on his own blog, Ned Batchelder has written up his HTML5 appcache validator tool he whipped together while working on Ibis Reader: The result is Caveman, a Python tool to validate HTML5 cache...
View ArticleConvert TEI to epub
The most useful standalone tool in threepress right now is tei2epub, which the system uses to convert its internal source XML to the emerging e-book standard format epub. TEI is the Text Encoding...
View ArticleEpub tools repository created
I have split threepress into two different projects hosted on Google Code: threepress search, which is the web application that is running on threepress.org. epub-tools, which is a repository for...
View Article‘Tools’ section added, first tool is web-based epubcheck
For one-off checks or use by non-developers, there is now a web front-end for the valuable epubcheck validation tool. Uploaded files are run through the validator and any error messages are reported....
View ArticleDjango/MySQL database backup script
I’m sure everyone has one of these lying around, but here’s mine in case you are as lazy a programmer as I usually am. The only thing Django-specific about it is that it reads your database...
View ArticleUpdates to epubcheck web service
The web-based method to validate ePub files against epubcheck has been updated in a number of ways: The underlying version of epubcheck has been upgraded to 1.0 RC The timeout for large file uploads...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Better technical book reviewing with Subversion
I just received my copy of Python for Unix and Linux System Administration by Noah Gift and Jeremy Jones, for which I was a technical reviewer. I’ve done several tech reviews for O’Reilly in the past,...
View Articleepubcheck service now updated to use version 1.0.0
The web-based method to validate ePub files against epubcheck has been updated to use epubcheck version 1.0.0, the first official release. Additionally, the tei2epub library which bundles epubcheck has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
TEI + Python + lxml + Dutch = Corpus Toneelkritiek Interbellum
I was pleased to be able to assist with the Corpus Toneelkritiek Interbellum project, which allows reading, browsing and searching of early 20th-century Dutch theater reviews. I can’t read Dutch, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Python and XML (and Google!) in publishing applications
IBM DeveloperWorks has just released an article of mine on High-Performance XML Parsing in Python. Although there is nothing publishing-centric about the article itself, it was based on my own...
View Articletei2epub 1.0 release candidate, and docbook2epub released
Two updates to the epub-tools Python code libraries: tei2epub has been updated to version 1.0b2 as a release candidate. docbook2epub has been released The two libraries share common code which is...
View Articleepubcheck service updated to epubcheck 1.0.3
This is actually a significant update to the threepress.org epubcheck validation service as flaws in the previous versions of Adobe’s epubcheck were causing several critical file types to be completely...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Introducing epubjs
To celebrate TOC I’m announcing an early prototype of epubjs: a pure Javascript ePub reader. The entire application is only 11K (plus 53K for jQuery 1.3). This is a pretty rough release, still very...
View Articledocbook2epub 1.0.1 released
Two updates to the docbook2epub tool that converts DocBook into ePub: docbook2epub is now installable with setuptools. HTML entities in DocBook source are supported Direct download of version 1.0.1.
View ArticleEPUBGen from Adobe now a part of epub-tools
Want to convert from Word to ePub? These tools aren’t a magic bullet, but they should be helpful to digital publishing developers. Paul Norton from Adobe has contributed a new software suite to the...
View ArticleOpen Feedback Publishing System launched
O’Reilly is announcing today that the in-progress book, Programming Scala, has been released using the Open Feedback Publishing System, a platform I built for them that allows public commenting on...
View ArticleFive ebook conversion tips
In the last few years many technology blogs have been participating in “National Blog Posting Month,” a play off the more famous National Novel Writing Month. Threepress is participating: we’ll be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Web-based ePub validator adds Preflight and API
Our web tool for using the open-source epubcheck validator got a quick refresh: Now includes epubpreflight results EpubCheck’s lesser-known companion checks for additional issues like content...
View Article3 tiny bash scripts for ePub creation
I wrote these to automate a really common task: zip up an ePub (properly) and validate it. It expects a local install of epubcheck. Install these functions in your .bash_profile. This should work on...
View ArticleCommand-line epubcheck results without epubcheck.jar
Most of the time, command-line users will be able to run the epubcheck Java binary without issues. But sometimes mysterious problems occur — this happened to me on OS X before upgrading to Snow...
View ArticleHow to get your bug fixed
Some of the most useful tools in ebook development are open source. Calibre and epubcheck especially come to mind. If you find a bug or want to request a feature, what are the best ways to ensure your...
View ArticleWhat’s in an identifier?
ePub books are supposed to have a unique identifier: the Dublin Core identifier found in the OPF file. Unfortunately, the ePub spec doesn’t have any mechanism to enforce the uniqueness of the ID, so we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tutorial on building ePubs now freely available
My tutorial Build a digital book with EPUB, posted on IBM DeveloperWorks, has been out for some time (November 2008!) but it has recently been updated with some minor corrections. It also no longer...
View Articledocbook2epub updated to version 1.0.2
Our Python script to convert from DocBook to ePub using the DocBook XSL has been updated to version 1.0.2. I’ve added some command-line options to override the location of the DocBook XSL (previously...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Test-driving Apple Pages with ePub export
Finally there’s a commercial word processor that can export ePub. Today Apple released an update to iWork 9.0.4 that provides ePub as one of the output formats in the Export menu, alongside PDF and...
View ArticleWhen to use Chef wrapper cookbooks (and when not to)
If you’ve used Chef, you’ve probably used a community cookbook. Community cookbooks are helpful because someone else has figured out how to solve your problem, be it installing nginx or configuring...
View ArticleClik here to view.
You should write clearer tickets to make your team happier
First, write this ticket: Develop a best practices “ticket model” for maximum happiness Type: Improvement Priority: P0 Status: Open Assigned to: Everyone Description We want to collaborate effectively...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Making Computers Sing
What does it mean to make a computer sing? Computers don’t have vocal cords; they can’t really “sing” like a human can, but they do have DACs (digital to analogue converters), which are the devices...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Close.io Sales Follow-Up Guide: What Every Salesperson Needs to Read in 2016
By Close.io “Follow-up is the key to sales success.” If you’re in sales, you’ve probably heard those words so many times they’ve lost their meaning. Let’s change that: it’s time to put power back in...
View Article