On Thursday 30 December 2010 00:43:49 Bill208 wrote: > John Jason Jordan-2 wrote: > > So my big question is, can I export from Scribus in E-PUB format? > > Assuming not, is there a workaround, like exporting to PDF or > > something else and then converting the output to E-PUB? Has > > anyone here published anything in E-PUB format? > > John, > > I've created epub files, but unfortunately not with Scribus. I've > used OpenOffice plus an extension for OpenOffice that will convert > OO text files to epub. From epub I use Calibre to convert to mobi > for my Kindle. Kindle will not read epub files. > > Even though the epub standard incorporates CSS and XHTML formatting > is lost or scrambled through the conversion process and I?ve yet to > develop a satisfactory workflow starting with Scribus. > > I would hope that at some point in the not too distant future > Scribus will be able to convert to epub. For an in-depth discussion > on the epub format, along with sample files for download and > reference links, start with this link: > > http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-epubtut/index.htm >l > > Bill EPub and the Kindle language are subsets of the xhtml language. EPub also has a three file structure for each document that is unique (and IMO more or less useless). Both of these languages limit severely the kinds of things we do with printed documents insofar as typesetting of text and placing of objects precisely on a page. This lack of specificity allows the document to be read on different readers with different screen widths etc.
Many decades ago Grace Murray Hopper stated that she didn't expect COBOL (her invention) to do the work of FORTRAN and vice versa. IBM violated her principle and touted PL/I which was a horrid mishmash of both. Despite much institutional support it died an early death. You could look it up. I lived through it. I don't see the mission of Scribus as expanding beyond printed output to e-book formats. The two missions are incompatible. MSWord and Open Office Writer provide multiple output formats. Both of them do many things, and do most of them badly. InDesign provides e-book formats, but the results are not widely praised. (IMO e-books did not need a special format, let alone two. E-Books can be formatted as html or xhtml or as pdf. In fact my one e-book "Creating Book Covers with Scribus" is in pdf format. I began setting it up in Scribus itself, but the file grew beyond the size limit imposed by the e-book host. So I rewrote it in pdftex, more work but smaller output. ) We can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. We are stuck with the two popular e-book formats. Their capabilities and limitations are quite different from the capabilities and limitations of printed documents. So be it. Let Scribus become the best at one thing, and let other programs produce e-books as defined by Kindle and EPub. For printed documents we need PDF X/1-a formatting, currently only available on Scribus 1.5.0. A quality indexing system is needed, along with paragraph at a time justification. We have enough on our plate. Let someone else create the universal formatter. Given the history of PL/I, OO Writer and so on I wish them luck. -- John Culleton Create Book Covers with Scribus: http://www.booklocker.com/p/books/4055.html Typesetting and indexing http://wexfordpress.com book sales http://wexfordpress.net Free barcode: http://www.tux.org/~milgram/bookland/
