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This is nice, but I'd still like to find a no frills, to-the-point explainer on how to assemble an epub from standard tools. After all, it's really just a zip a

This is nice, but I'd still like to find a no frills, to-the-point explainer on how to assemble an epub from standard tools. After all, it's really just a zip archive with a couple directories and some specially named files. All of the tutorials I find are either woefully out of date - usually they can't create valid EPUB3 content, require stupid software like Java due to epubcheck, or just punt the whole issue to something like Calibre, Sigil, or worse, InDesign. Have no actual, working programmers - save for John Siracusa - ever seen an epub file? /rant

harshreality 6y ago
Create an empty epub in calibre or vellum or any other editor that will create epubs for you; then unzip it and edit it raw. You can do the same thing with a professionally published epub. In either case, you can rip out the metadata files (opf, ncx, etc.) and create templates from them, which you can reuse in your own projects without beginning in an epub editor or generator. You still probably want to run an epub through checking before you publish it, to make sure the metadata is consistent with the contents, and that you're not violating epub[23] rules (unless you know the standard perfectly as it applies to to subset you're using, and you never make any mistakes), but you don't have to be using any bloated tooling during the main phase of writing and editing the book.
- chrisfinazzo 6y ago
  That would work, up until I actually try to re-zip the contents. Last I looked at the spec, it requires things to be done in a particular order (as @tyingq's link indicates) and although I've used pandoc to convert some other documents, coming up with the proper incantation to feed into it seems like more trouble than just doing it yourself. More to the point, things like my Oral Defense required certain elements to be on a given page (e.g, p.1-2 were front matter and the text began on p.3) and I don't know if that kind of control is possible in pandoc. With regard to validation, there used to be a web form at validator.idpf.org which let you upload a finished book and it would scan for errors, but that page seems to be gone. I don't doubt that epubcheck works, it's just a shame that it requires a huge download to enable its functionality and one which doesn't really play well in macOS. I'm perfectly ok with doing the creation and editing by hand, but come on, this is a UNIX system (!) and the absence of a better command line tool for validating output is imho inexcusable.
tyingq 6y ago
Maybe more basic than you want, but this looks helpful to me: https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/1183/what-is-the-minimum-required-content-for-a-valid-epub/1184#1184 https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/1183/what-is-the-...
asicsp 6y ago
I use pandoc [1] to generate pdf/epub from GitHub style markdown. I didn't know css, but learned enough to customize a few settings. [1] https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook-generation/customizing-pandoc/ https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook-generation/c...

harshreality 6y ago

Create an empty epub in calibre or vellum or any other editor that will create epubs for you; then unzip it and edit it raw. You can do the same thing with a professionally published epub. In either case, you can rip out the metadata files (opf, ncx, etc.) and create templates from them, which you can reuse in your own projects without beginning in an epub editor or generator. You still probably want to run an epub through checking before you publish it, to make sure the metadata is consistent with the contents, and that you're not violating epub[23] rules (unless you know the standard perfectly as it applies to to subset you're using, and you never make any mistakes), but you don't have to be using any bloated tooling during the main phase of writing and editing the book.

chrisfinazzo 6y ago
That would work, up until I actually try to re-zip the contents. Last I looked at the spec, it requires things to be done in a particular order (as @tyingq's link indicates) and although I've used pandoc to convert some other documents, coming up with the proper incantation to feed into it seems like more trouble than just doing it yourself. More to the point, things like my Oral Defense required certain elements to be on a given page (e.g, p.1-2 were front matter and the text began on p.3) and I don't know if that kind of control is possible in pandoc. With regard to validation, there used to be a web form at validator.idpf.org which let you upload a finished book and it would scan for errors, but that page seems to be gone. I don't doubt that epubcheck works, it's just a shame that it requires a huge download to enable its functionality and one which doesn't really play well in macOS. I'm perfectly ok with doing the creation and editing by hand, but come on, this is a UNIX system (!) and the absence of a better command line tool for validating output is imho inexcusable.

tyingq 6y ago

Maybe more basic than you want, but this looks helpful to me: https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/1183/what-is-the-minimum-required-content-for-a-valid-epub/1184#1184 https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/1183/what-is-the-...

asicsp 6y ago

I use pandoc [1] to generate pdf/epub from GitHub style markdown. I didn't know css, but learned enough to customize a few settings. [1] https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook-generation/customizing-pandoc/ https://learnbyexample.github.io/tutorial/ebook-generation/c...