Chapter 3. Getting started
Installing XMLmind Ebook Compiler
How to install XMLmind Ebook Compiler is explained in Chapter 5. Installation.
Writing an ebook specification
You have learned in Chapter 2. Primer:
- What is an ebook specification. The corresponding reference is found in Chapter 7. Reference of ebook elements.
- What an ebook page may contain. The corresponding reference is found in Chapter 6. Content of a source HTML page.
You'll find a template for your ebook specification in ebookc_install_dir/doc/manual/template/template.ebook
.
The recommended extension for these files is
".ebook
".
Writing a CSS stylesheet for your ebooks
If you want your ebook to look good, you'll have to specify a
number of CSS styles for it as explained in Nicely formatted books.
You'll find a CSS stylesheet template in ebookc_install_dir/doc/manual/template/template.css
.
Alternatively,
you may use the XMLmind CSS stylesheet ebookc_install_dir/doc/manual/css/xmlmind_ebook.css
as is for your own ebooks. You may also use the XMLmind stylesheet as a
starting point for developing your own CSS stylesheet. In both cases, make
sure to add the following links to the headcommon
element of your root book
element:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | <headcommon> <html:link href="css/xmlmind_ebook.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> <html:link href="css/icons/" rel="resource" type="inode/directory"/> </headcommon> |
Compiling an ebook specification
An ebook
specification is compiled using a command-line tool called
ebookc
.
Run ebookc_install_dir/bin/ebookc.bat
on Windows and
ebookc_install_dir/bin/ebookc
on the Mac and on
Linux.
Example, convert this manual to EPUB:
C:\ebookc_1_1_0\docsrc\manual> ..\bin\ebookc.bat manual.ebook out\manual.epub
Example,
convert this manual to Web Help (output directory being
"out\manual_webhelp\
"):
C:\ebookc_1_1_0\docsrc\manual> ..\bin\ebookc.bat -f webhelp¬ manual.ebook out\manual_webhelp
Example, convert this manual to PDF
using a copy of RenderX XEP installed in "C:\xep\
":
C:\ebookc_1_1_0\docsrc\manual> ..\bin\ebookc.bat¬ -xep C:\xep\xep.bat¬ manual.ebook out\manual.pdf
Example, convert this manual to DOCX
using a copy of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter installed in
"C:\xfc\
":
C:\ebookc_1_1_0\docsrc\manual> ..\bin\ebookc.bat¬ -xfc C:\xfc\bin\fo2rtf.bat¬ manual.ebook out\manual.docx
To avoid specifying options
-xep
and-xfc
each time you runebookc
, the simplest if to create once for all anebookc.options
file in theebookc
user preferences directory. This directory is:
$HOME/.ebookc/
on Linux.$HOME/Library/Application Support/XMLmind/ebookc/
on the Mac.%APPDATA%\XMLmind\ebookc\
on Windows.Your
ebookc.options
file would contain:-xep C:\xep\xep.bat -xfc C:\xfc\bin\fo2rtf.bat