More precisely, XMLmind XHTML Editor has now, out of the box, extensive support for creating an ebook specification and its source HTML pages and for converting an ebook specification to the following formats: EPUB, Web Help, PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX (MS-Word) and ODT (OpenOffice/LibreOffice). More information in Creating an ebook out of a set of HTML pages.

This new function leverages a new, free, open source software component called XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short).

Ebookc features: topic-oriented; automatic TOC; automatic “back-of-the-book index”; automatic cross-references; automatic numbering of sections, tables and figures; footnotes; conditional processing; built-in XInclude. Ebookc uses CSS to create nicely formatted books and this, even for output formats like PDF and DOCX.

All in all, this makes ebookc an authoring tool nearly as powerful as DITA or DocBook, but being based on HTML and on CSS, it is much easier to learn, use and customize. More information about ebookc in this primer.

This version also features a few minor enhancements —mainly a new layout for the generated Web Help— and bug fixes.