Publishing with XML

eScape Release 1-1 and other notes

A new version of eScape is now available for download from the eScape web page.Both Linux and Windows versions are available.

This release improves output file size with deflate compression when making the zip. This was primarily done to prevent the Sony BBeB device from being confused when assessing file size, but has the obvious advantage of making considerably smaller ePub packages. The specification allows store or flate methods in zip. This is a significant improvement and it is recommended that regular users upgrade to this version to take advantage of this feature.

The rest of this blog entry outlines a new localization feature, some general information and little known facts about eScape. Read on...

eScape Linux (Deb) Available

We have just released the Linux Version of eScape. You can download it from here. This has the same features as current Windows Version. To all those who asked for the Linux version, thank you for your patience.
Please report any problems with the installation here.

Next Version

In the next version we will be introducing

1. Images
2. Embedded fonts
3. A new Structure-Style to allow  independent localization of the ePub TOC (NCX) text into any language.

More details on the operation of these features will be posted on the blog. Please feel free to make any comments or suggestions. 

Image Strategy for eScape

We have received a lot of requests for image support in eScape. We rely on the excellent XSL convertors to XHTML that come standard with OOo (if you install them). We then clean them up to IGP:FoundationXHTML standards. Unfortunately images are processed to XHTML differently in different versions of Open Office. In the latest they convert them to Base 64, so there is not a one size fits all conversion from OOo to ePub.

eScape uses OOo as a Structure Stying environment - not a presentation styling environment, that means you are using it as a production environment to create an ePub, not a nice ODT/PDF and an ePub. We can handle images as inserts using the following, slightly inelegant strategy.

If you are interested read on. It gets a bit technical from here ...

eScape Bug Fix Release

To all those using eScape, there was an unfortunate and slightly careless bug in the NCX DTD declaration which may stop the Table of Contents displaying on some devices. This has been fixed. Please uninstall your current version of eScape and download the new version from the web page. Alternatively you can  click here to download the file directly. I will extend this post with more information shortly. Apologies to all eScape users for any inconvenience. You may like to regenerate your ePubs from your ODT's, although of course you can do that at any time.

Walden, and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Thoreau wrote this great book, possibly a little relevant in tough economic times. You can download the ePub, or the components from the Azardi resources page. Anyway the point of this blog is just a quick analysis on creating what is a slightly larger book using eScape. I just thought this was an interesting enough book both in terms of content (man that guy has a POV!) and content structures to make it a little bit interesting.

eScape Online Tutorial

The eScape ODT to ePub Online tutorial is taking shape, probably to the stage where it is usable. If you haven't noticed it's available it is probably worth a look here (opens in a new window).  Hopefully the tutorial will be substantially finished tomorrow (24th Feb 2009). Besides the usual do 1, 2, 3, it also tries to give some explanation of the inside workings of XML for publishing, and how consistent structure gives enormous flexibility in reuse.

I need to extend the page on pre-processing text files (eg. from Project Gutenberg) to handle end-of-lines, smart quotes, em-dashes and a few more minor issues. It is pretty important to condition the text file nicely before applying Structure-Styling because macro processes can really upset the metadata and other applied styles (as I found out the hard way).