Recently the TeleRead blog discussed the need for an ePub desktop word processor application that would allow authors and non-techies to easily (and cheaply) write and save their work in the EPUB format. There are a number of OpenOffice proponents but otherwise there is no solution yet.

So what are your options?

One possible sollution could be the free eCub EPUB creator, “a simple .epub creation tool” written by Julian Smart that allows you to import XHTML or text files and export these into an EPUB formatted file. Okay, so you won’t get any nice WYSIWYG editing tools but the basic editing (notepad style) is enough to make basic adjustments from within the programme.

Versions are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris – there is even a portable version for use on USB devices.

I tried a quick test project which had 13 HTML, 2 images and a CSS file. I filled in all the appropriate fields from within eCub, used the built-in Cover Designer, changed a couple of options here and there then hit Compile. Done and Dusted!

Here are the basic features of eCub EPUB Creator;

• Creates unencrypted EPUB files from text or XHTML files
• Edit text or XHTML files with its simple internal editor
• Built-in (simple) cover image designer
• Optionally creates title, content and cover pages
• Command line execution options
• Portable Mode (data and settings are stored locally)

When the eCub created EPUB file is opened in Adobe Digital Editions it views just fine, however, when trying to open the same file on my Sony Reader and iPod Touch it failed with, according to Stanza, an OPF error. I will need to do some digging around to find out why it fails on these two devices, but I’m sure there is a simple explanation.

It’s been just over a year since the official release of the EPUB spec and we are now starting to see some great tools released in aiding the creation, conversion and viewing of EPUB formatted books. This is certainly what the ePub community needs and I have a feeling we will only see more tools like eCub being created during 2009.

A couple of weeks back we had a new release of the epub validation tool as the old one was not validating documents properly. epubcheck-1.0.3 was released to fix the XMLParser as it was not allowing multiple validators to be added.

The error was first realised by Jon Noring who noticed that Adobe’s “page-map” attribute extension, which is used in the NCX , was being validated incorrectly. This extended markup can be used for mapping page numbers (to align with those in the paper book edition).

Jon Noring has posted to several communities about the page-map issue. Here’s a short extract (slightly edited);

I recently became aware that a few publishers are using Adobe’s “page-map attribute extension” in their EPUB publications for mapping page numbers (such as in a parallel paper book edition) to the EPUB content.

In principle it is a great feature [the "page-map attribute extension"], and EPUB now provides a standard way (via NCX) to do this. However, Adobe’s proprietary implementation violates two very clear requirements in the OPF “Package” specification (OPF is one of the specs which underlie EPUB):

• See item iii — the ‘page-map’ attribute is not supported in the OPF Package Schema
• See item A-iii. A reading system must ignore all Package markup not supported by the OPF Package schema.

Therefore, any publisher wishing their EPUB to be fully conformant to the IDPF specifications MUST NOT use Adobe’s ‘page-map’ extension.

[...] Adobe implemented ‘page-map’ a long while back, and they may no longer officially support it after NCX became a requirement.

Here is Jon’s full post; Important Advisory to Publishers on EPUB Format: Do not use ‘page-map’ extension.

Jon is pushing on this point as there is actually an alternative to the ‘page-map’ functionality already built into NCX specifications.

The right way to add page markers is with NCX, using the element which is already supported in EPUB, and furthermore is fully accessible! It is trivial for reading system developers, including Adobe, to support it since they already have to support the primary navigation list in NCX — pretty much the same code can be used to support the other link lists NCX can also support, such as page mapping, list of illustrations, and pretty much any other list one wants. NCX support for multiple navigation link lists is very powerful!

I’ll make a post with more details on how to do this in the next few days.

Perhaps it’s difficult to ask publishers to give up a feature that currently works, but as more and more ePub reader systems implement EPUB in accordance with the specifications, then you might suddenly find that your eBooks start to break. I’m sure it’s worth a little effort now to save on what will be lots of effort in the future.

Paul Norton from Adobe Digital Editions has now released the epubpreflight validation tool. This small utility is meant as a compliment to epubcheck and is used to check that your ePub files are suitable for Mobile devices. There are many guidelines that need to be followed when developing ePub for mobile devices that are not mentioned in the EPUB specs, so this is going to be a very welcome tool.

Here’s a list of things that epubpreflight currently checks for;

• Content files that are empty.
• Content files that are over 300KB.
• Image files that are empty.
• Image files that are over 10MB.

As you can see the list is rather small at the moment but this will grow in time. On the DE blog, Paul also mentions that he would like to see a set of configuration files that could test for specific platforms (ADE, PRS505, conversion to other formats, etc.)

It’s going to be a good number of years yet before mobile devices have the power to parse very large files (images, chapters, etc) so it’s going to be in everyone’s interest to see this tool developed.

Feedbooks are at it again, now they’ve gone and updated their RSS tool to include conversions to the ePub format! I’ve been playing around with this and it’s a really cool app – you can even supply your own RSS feeds. The converter actually outputs to a number of different formats including;

• ePub
• Mobipocket/Kindle
• PDF
• Sony Reader (PDF)
• iLiad

Hadrien, Feedbooks co-founder, posted that along with adding support for ePub and Mobipocket, the files will generate much faster and there is also an “API endpoint for developers to create applications (such as iNewsStand on the iLiad).”

He also notes;

The sweet part is probably for Kindle owners, or people using Mobipocket files on a wireless device. You can directly update your feeds/newspapers from your device. Create your own newspaper with your daily reading, click on the update link inside the file and you get your own newspaper every morning!

If you’re a Kindle owner and need more detailed instructions on how to set this up, visit the “Free RSS Feeds on your Kindle” link over on MobileRead.

The output of the feeds in the ePub format looks fine when using Digital Editions, but with no ePub ready mobile device to test on I had to try them out using the Sony Reader compatible PDF (yep, still no news on the Sony/Digital Editions firmware update for reading ePub files directly on the Sony Reader.) The output is simple but more than adequate for reading RSS news feeds.

Feedbooks will not be enabling images for this first release but I have to say, this is already looking like a really nice tool…especially if your reading device has WiFi capabilities.

The Digital Editions blog is reporting that the latest release of the DocBook XSL (1.74.0) now supports output to the ePub format. It was only recently that the tei2epub converter was announced so it is great to have a converter from DocBook to the ePub format.

DocBook is a very mature XML master format that although is used mainly for technical documents, can also be used for simpler documents and prose like books, which could make it a useful master format for any public domain eBook projects.

This release of the DocBook XSL is an experimental release and is being made available for testing purposes. Any developers out there should certainly check it out and if you find any issues, report them back to the DocBook project.

We are seeing more and more tools for creating ePub files being developed and the latest to join the throng is the tei2epub converter from threepress.org. This one however is aimed more for developers than the end user, unlike the BookGlutton ePub API.

tei2epub is being developed by Liza Daly and is written in XSLT, although it does utilise a little Python. I know nothing about Python but from what I can make out this is mainly for creating the actual files and final .epub container (which is actually just a renamed .zip file).

This converter really interests me as I already have my own converter (pg2tei) for creating TEI documents from plain text files, as found on Project Gutenberg. I recently started teaching myself XSLT so will follow the development of this for sure!

I don’t have a Python processor installed so haven’t ran any files through this, though I have taken a quick look at the source code and it looks quite straight forward. I believe this uses the official stylesheets written by TEI, so the tei2epub converter should be quite simple to follow, even for those of us whose XSLT skills are not yet well developed.

If you’re interested in both TEI and ePub then this is certainly going to be useful to add to your toolkit.

Earlier this month BookGlutton announced their ePub API. This neat little tool gives everyone an easy way to convert HTML files to the IDPF’s ePub format.

At present the API is in public beta and currently only converts ‘simple’ HTML files, it also lacks both image and CSS support. Still, don’t let this put you off, the potential here is great and is certainly another step in the right direction. As time goes by the API will certainly get better.

To show the kind of acceptence ePub is gaining this tool also caught the attention Keith Fahrlgren over at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Blog who certainly seems encouraged by this and feels that it is “the first step in lowering the barrier to entry to creating EPUB documents.”

Many other people around the net have shown a strong interest in the API, with most believing this is a first step in encouraging developers to create more ePub tools.

If you wish to try it out yourself go visit the BookGlutton ePup API page, there’s also some instructions there to help get you started.