I'm CC'ing Josh Hieronymus, who has worked on some of this for GSoC. He is probably busy with other things, but maybe he is still interested.
Scott On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Alan L Tyree <alanty...@gmail.com> wrote: > Sorry for the top posting, but this is short. My own view is that an > ePub exporter for LyX would make it a killer application. > > Thanks for your comments, Steve. Have you looked at Pandoc? > > Cheers, > Alan > > > Steve Litt writes: > >> On Fri, 31 Jan 2014 09:35:46 +0000 >> Anthony Campbell <a...@acampbell.org.uk> wrote: >> >> >>> This is for printed books. As regards conversion to ebook format, I've >>> done this for several books on Smashwords, but that is quite a >>> long-winded process because it has to be Word.doc format, which I do >>> in LibreOffice (not much fun). Kindle does accept rtf, which would >>> help, but as I'd already made Word.doc files I just used those. >>> >>> Anthony >> >> Ladies and gentlemen, if the preceding paragraph doesn't convince us we >> need a good, solid, LyX to ePub and LyX to Mobi conversion (do ePub >> first, you can convert ePub into Mobi), then nothing will. Instead of >> slamming out his book in LyX, Anthony must use an outside service >> (smashwords), meaning a two word modification is, as Joe Biden would >> say, a Big Friggin Deal. Further, to satisfy Smashwords he must write it >> in LibreOffice to simulate MS Word. Or, if he's just doing Kindle, he >> can submit rtf (what could *possibly* go wrong). >> >> You can't base a LyX to ePub converter off either LyX2Xhtml or Alex's >> eLyXer: Those produce great (X)html for stuff like footnotes and >> bibliographies, but they discard semantic tags (h1-h6) for variously >> named divs (yeah, <div>, not even <p>), as I remember they still use >> outdated <a name="whatever"/> instead of giving an ID to a tag. One or >> both of them does you the "favor" of renaming all graphic files to a >> numerical sequence: I guess this is to prevent identically named >> graphics in different directories from clobbering each other, but there >> are better ways of doing this that don't have the anti-debugging >> baggage of removing all meaning from graphic names. Current >> LyX exported (X)html files just generally require *huge* >> postprocessing, with zillions of special cases, to get them in >> reasonable shape to make an ePub. If that were not the case, somebody >> would have made a LyX2ePub a long, long time ago, because the demand is >> there, and a lot of people have that itch, and I'm not the only one >> who has tried to do it. >> >> Shamefully, because I need to be able to have my books available as >> ePubs, after 13 years using LyX to write my books, I'm now using the >> Bluefish editor to write my future books. I've written an Xhtml to ePub >> converter in Python, and I can write an Xhtml to LaTeX converter just >> as easily. But let me ask you something: Have you ever tried to slam >> out 2500 words a day in Bluefish? Bluefish will never have the >> authoring speed of LyX. But then again, as things stand now, a LyX >> authored document will never be convertible to ePub. >> >> The shame is, in theory, LyX to ePub is simple. Every environment >> becomes <p class="environmentname">, every character style becomes >> <span class="charstylename">. Leave <div> out of it except for every >> special cases. Even lyx-code should become <pre class="lyxcode">, not >> <div class="lyxcode">. >> >> A special one-per-book configuration file (I did mine in YAML) defines >> the assignment of Part, Chapter, Section, Subsection etc to <h1>, <h2>, >> <h3>, <h4> etc, and defines which go in the table of contents, and >> which get numbers and what prefix the number gets (Part, Chapter, etc). >> I've already done this: It works. Don't worry about converting LyX >> environment and char style defs to CSS, just list all paragraph and >> char styles, so that the author can make the necessary CSS. CSS is >> *much* easier to define than LaTeX environments and commands. And yes, >> let the author know that this export requires the author use only a >> subset of LyX's capabilities. >> >> I briefly considered writing Yet Another LyX to HTML Exporter, but >> found out that in spite of LyX's native format being Non Human Friendly >> XML, it's not *well formed* XML, so I can't use Python's lxml.etree, >> let alone Python's xml.etree.ElementTree, to parse it. Perhaps if LyX >> offered an export to well-formed XML, hopefully with a DTD, I could >> parse that to produce ePub-friendly Xhtml, but as far as I know that >> doesn't exist either. >> >> Anyway, I would suggest anyone who is working on any portion of a LyX >> to ePub conversion talk with me. I'm pretty knowledgeable about ePub, >> and I've already identified a lot of the dead ends and blind alleys in >> ePub creation, and I know what parts of the LyX document should go into >> the ePub, and which parts would be better re-done as either config or >> CSS. >> >> My switch to Bluefish isn't cast in concrete: Once LyX contains a >> good, generic, reliable LyX to ePub or even LyX to "ePub friendly" Xhtml >> conversion, I can switch back. If you do it soon enough, I won't even >> have to write an Xhtml to LaTeX converter :-) >> >> Thanks, >> >> SteveT >> >> Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/ >> Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance > > > -- > Alan L Tyree http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan > Tel: 04 2748 6206 sip:172...@iptel.org
