EPub programming
This page is for those programmers who want to be able to generate a program to build an ePub book. For other libraries & implementations see the Stack Overflow threads with the "epub" tag.
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[edit] C# (.Net Framework)
- DotNetEpub is a simple .NET library for ePUB files generation. What it can do:
- Package your xhtml/css/images/fonts in one ePub file
- Add auxiliary xhtml files (like notes)
- Add metadata (author, title, description, ID)
- Generate TOC with nested entries.
[edit] Perl
- EBook::Epub is a perl module that helps you develop scripts that manipulate epub files.
[edit] Python
- epub-tools is a collection of open source (BSD) tools for generating and managing EPUB documents, including conversions from:
- Word
- RTF
- DocBook
- TEI
- FictionBook
- python-epub-builder is a small python library for programmatically building EPUB books. It provides API for easily constructing and packaging EPUBs from text content.
[edit] Docbook/XSLT
DocBook is a well-known dialect of XML which allows better semantics. It also has a well-maintained series of XSLT stylesheets, one of which specifically outputs epub. This Epub XSL transformation is included with Oxygen XML Editor/Author tool, but it is more common for technical writers and programmers to create a XSL file (called a "customization layer") which invokes the DocBook Epub XSL file and any customizations you need to make to the epub file.
Advantages of using DocBook for outputting epub
- Many advanced book features are already built in (Indices, XRefs, captions, images, Table of Contents)
- easier to edit and to version source
- not necessary to use regex to make global changes
Disadvantages of using DocBook for outputting epub:
- steep learning curve, especially if you don't have a sample project to work with
- knowledge of XSL really helps
- sometimes DocBook outputs extra & necessary tags
- a lot of the heavy lifting is done at the customization layer file
- difficulty getting your environment set up.
For more information about the docbook-to-epub process, see the DocBook page.
