eBook Creation Tools For Linux?

phinance asks: "Are there any (preferably free) tools for publishing (free) eBooks (Glassbook, Rocket Book, et. al.) for Linux? There's an Open eBook specification, but the popular readers don't support it. Do I need to build a Windows box to make an eBook?"

One possible approach

[Sneakums]

If you are targeting PalmOS devices and you're not concered with controlling copying, you could consider using Plucker [gnu-designs.com]. I have successfully used to it to place the HTML edition of O'Reilly's DocBook reference on my Palm, as well as Engines of Creation and some programming manuals.

The snapshot of Plucker I am using supports multiple databases, images (I haven't tested this) and most of the HTML tags you'll need. The width of the Palm screen can cause problems with things such as tables, however.

--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"

Start your stop watches

[gorilla]

How long until someone mentions vi or emacs?

Tools for the Rocket eBook

[AndyBarrow]

Generally, content for the Rocket eBook is created in a simplified HTML format (have a look at KnowBetter [knowbetter.com] for details) and then converted to a .rb file for uploading to the rocket. For creating content, you can use Wayne Davison's open source tools [clari.net]. I've used rbmake [sourceforge.net] and found that it does a great job on html files I have written, or stuff I want to suck off the net.

To communicate with your Rocket eBook, Matt Greenwood has written Merlin, a java-based tool for communicating with your Rocket. It's still in alpha, but works okay. [shinui.com]

Good luck - the Rocket is a great little tool. I carry mine around with me all the time when I'm travelling.

Oops - the real URL for Merlin

[AndyBarrow]

I little dislexia - I clicked submit instead of preview. Here is the URL for Merlin [shinui.com].

easy

[rodentia]

While the current crop of readers doesn't handle the oebook spec, rest assured that they will. All the principal industry figures are participating in the specification. I can only assume that the lack of support is a result of the "rights management" issues currently occupying the time of the conferees.

In fact, the only feature of the oebook not supported is presumably the package format and "spine", the base of the spec is a simplified xhtml which should not break any current reader. Cleanliness of appearance is another matter, YMMV.

As to writing books to the spec, get yer data in XML, get Xalan [apache.org] and write a stylesheet. Don't get cheaper than that.