8 ms·

Easy Book: book publishing as easy as it should be

76 points by old_sound 15y ago

tghw 15y ago
Anyone know how this compares to Scrivener?
- wiradikusuma 15y ago
  Actually, the more correct question should be, "how to make it work with Scrivener" as I think this project more like command-line build tool (make/ant/sbt) and Scrivener being the IDE. And I'm also interested to know the answer :)
mario21ic 15y ago
Excellent
jmhobbs 15y ago
Fantastic - thank you for sharing this!
libraryatnight 15y ago
The video makes this seem really awesome, I can't wait to get home and try it. Thanks for sharing.
mrleinad 15y ago
You should lose the -project part of the URL, and maybe brush up the UI for the webpage a bit. Other than that, sounds like an awesome app for writers.
zzzmarcus 15y ago
If I'm reading the license, which the README says is MIT but actually is a modified version of the MIT license, correctly it means anything you publish that is created using the software has to be published under the MIT license. "You must publish your work as open source under the very same conditions." https://github.com/javiereguiluz/easybook/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/javiereguiluz/easybook/blob/master/LICENS...
- spatten 15y ago
  Ouch. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
- mcargian 15y ago
  Yeah the license wording is very unclear but in the docs he tries to clarify. From the docs: You must publish your work under the very same conditions. This means that other people could use and profit from your derived work. In any case, you are the sole proprietor of the books published with easybook, including all the copyright and related rights applicable in your country of residence. You are not obliged to share these works in any way, even if you benefit from them financially.
  - 3pt14159 15y ago
    Yeah, so changes to Easy Book need to be open sourced, but books written with easy book are kept as is. IMO MIT should mean MIT, not a modified form of GNU.
Turing_Machine 15y ago
Looks nice! If you could make it generate nice-looking epub and mobipocket from the same source, you'd really have something excellent.
- Rabidgremlin 15y ago
  Checkout Pandoc http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html
gnufs 15y ago
Note that it depends on a proprietary shareware called Prince XML for PDF publishing. It can publish HTML without it though.
okal 15y ago
This seems perfect for a project I'm planning to start soon. Any chance of supporting epub/mobi formats in the near future? The licensing is also a concern. If the creator wanted a copyleft license, why not just go with the GPL with additional clauses? People already have certain expectations the moment they see a BSD or MIT license. Slightly misleading, if you ask me.
cturner 15y ago
Would be neat to see braile, voice-menu outputs.
javiereguiluz 15y ago
First, thank you all for your comments and suggestions. 1. You are right about the license. It’s (unintentionally) misleading. I’ll change it soon to pure MIT license. 2. @okal, @Turing_Machine: yes, ePub will be supported and more formats will follow. 3. @gnufs: it uses PrinceXML for PDF publishing because it’s, by far, the best library I’ve found for HTML to PDF conversion. Do you know any other free/open-source library with the same or superior features? 4. @mrleinad: yes, I’d love to use a shorter and cleaner URL; but it’s really tough to find a good and unregistered domain with the word “book”.
- morganpyne 15y ago
  re (3): I have used the headless webkit engine to render high quality PDFs from HTML in the past. It's free. See: https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/
  - javiereguiluz 15y ago
    Thanks for your reference. I'll try it, but after reading its documentation I'm afraid it doesn't have support for the much needed and non-standard CSS properties invented by PrinceXML (http://princexml.com/doc/8.0/properties/ http://princexml.com/doc/8.0/properties/)
eob 15y ago
I am still searching for the holy grail that allows me to blend markdown and LaTeX.
- chalmerj 15y ago
  I've had decent sucess with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/). MutiMarkdown also allows you to put raw LaTeX inline if you specify the right flags.

76 points by old_sound 15y ago

tghw 15y ago

Anyone know how this compares to Scrivener?

wiradikusuma 15y ago
Actually, the more correct question should be, "how to make it work with Scrivener" as I think this project more like command-line build tool (make/ant/sbt) and Scrivener being the IDE. And I'm also interested to know the answer :)

mario21ic 15y ago

Excellent

jmhobbs 15y ago

Fantastic - thank you for sharing this!

libraryatnight 15y ago

The video makes this seem really awesome, I can't wait to get home and try it. Thanks for sharing.

mrleinad 15y ago

You should lose the -project part of the URL, and maybe brush up the UI for the webpage a bit. Other than that, sounds like an awesome app for writers.

zzzmarcus 15y ago

If I'm reading the license, which the README says is MIT but actually is a modified version of the MIT license, correctly it means anything you publish that is created using the software has to be published under the MIT license. "You must publish your work as open source under the very same conditions." https://github.com/javiereguiluz/easybook/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/javiereguiluz/easybook/blob/master/LICENS...

spatten 15y ago
Ouch. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
mcargian 15y ago
Yeah the license wording is very unclear but in the docs he tries to clarify. From the docs: You must publish your work under the very same conditions. This means that other people could use and profit from your derived work. In any case, you are the sole proprietor of the books published with easybook, including all the copyright and related rights applicable in your country of residence. You are not obliged to share these works in any way, even if you benefit from them financially.
- 3pt14159 15y ago
  Yeah, so changes to Easy Book need to be open sourced, but books written with easy book are kept as is. IMO MIT should mean MIT, not a modified form of GNU.

Turing_Machine 15y ago

Looks nice! If you could make it generate nice-looking epub and mobipocket from the same source, you'd really have something excellent.

Rabidgremlin 15y ago
Checkout Pandoc http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html

gnufs 15y ago

Note that it depends on a proprietary shareware called Prince XML for PDF publishing. It can publish HTML without it though.

okal 15y ago

This seems perfect for a project I'm planning to start soon. Any chance of supporting epub/mobi formats in the near future? The licensing is also a concern. If the creator wanted a copyleft license, why not just go with the GPL with additional clauses? People already have certain expectations the moment they see a BSD or MIT license. Slightly misleading, if you ask me.

cturner 15y ago

Would be neat to see braile, voice-menu outputs.

javiereguiluz 15y ago

First, thank you all for your comments and suggestions. 1. You are right about the license. It’s (unintentionally) misleading. I’ll change it soon to pure MIT license. 2. @okal, @Turing_Machine: yes, ePub will be supported and more formats will follow. 3. @gnufs: it uses PrinceXML for PDF publishing because it’s, by far, the best library I’ve found for HTML to PDF conversion. Do you know any other free/open-source library with the same or superior features? 4. @mrleinad: yes, I’d love to use a shorter and cleaner URL; but it’s really tough to find a good and unregistered domain with the word “book”.

morganpyne 15y ago
re (3): I have used the headless webkit engine to render high quality PDFs from HTML in the past. It's free. See: https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/ https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/
- javiereguiluz 15y ago
  Thanks for your reference. I'll try it, but after reading its documentation I'm afraid it doesn't have support for the much needed and non-standard CSS properties invented by PrinceXML (http://princexml.com/doc/8.0/properties/ http://princexml.com/doc/8.0/properties/)

eob 15y ago

I am still searching for the holy grail that allows me to blend markdown and LaTeX.

chalmerj 15y ago
I've had decent sucess with pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/). MutiMarkdown also allows you to put raw LaTeX inline if you specify the right flags.