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Build a digital book with EPUB

The open XML-based eBook format

Liza Daly, Software Engineer and Owner, Threepress Consulting Inc.
Photo of Liza Daly
Liza Daly is a software engineer who specializes in applications for the publishing industry. She has been the lead developer on major online products for Oxford University Press, O'Reilly Media, and other publishers. Currently she is an independent consultant and the founder of Threepress, an open source project developing ebook applications.

Summary:  Need to distribute documentation, create an eBook, or just archive your favorite blog posts? EPUB is an open specification for digital books based on familiar technologies like XML, CSS, and XHTML, and EPUB files can be read on portable e-ink devices, mobile phones, and desktop computers. This tutorial explains the EPUB format in detail, demonstrates EPUB validation using Java technology, and moves step-by-step through automating EPUB creation using DocBook and Python.

05 Feb 2009 - As a followup to reader comments, the author revised the content of Listing 3 and refreshed the epub-raw-files.zip file (see Downloads).

27 Apr 2010 - Refreshed the epub-raw-files.zip file (see Downloads).

03 Jun 2010 - At author request,revised the content of Listings 3 and 8. Also refreshed the epub-raw-files.zip file (see Downloads).

11 Jan 2011 - At author request,revised the content of Listing 5. Changed second line of code from <item id="ncx" href="toc.ncx" media-type="text/xml"/>; to <item id="ncx" href="toc.ncx" media-type="application/x-dtbncx+xml"/>.

12 Jul 2011 - As a followup to reader comments, revised the content of Listing 14. Removed ` character near end of first line of code from <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?`>. Revised code now reads: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>.

Date:  13 Jul 2011 (Published 25 Nov 2008)
Level:  Intermediate
PDF:  A4 and Letter (504 KB | 25 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity:  234241 views
Comments:  


Downloads

DescriptionNameSizeDownload method
Resources to build the EPUB in this tutorialepub-raw-files.zip8KBHTTP
DocBook to EPUB tools1docbook-to-epub.zip7KBHTTP

Information about download methods

Note

  1. This .zip file contains the sample DocBook XML file illustrated in the tutorial and a complete docbook2epub.py script. You must download lxml and the DocBook XSL separately; see the links in Resources.

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static.content.url=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/js/artrating/
SITE_ID=1
Zone=XML, Mobile development
ArticleID=485946
TutorialTitle=Build a digital book with EPUB
publish-date=07132011
author1-email=liza@threepress.org
author1-email-cc=dhatten@us.ibm.com

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