Electronic Publishing Using Free Software?

Arkaein asks: "I am planning on electronically self publishing a book that I want to write, typeset, and create diagrams for on my Linux PC. Most of the diagrams for the book will be generated through scripted custom software, and I want the final product to be as compact as possible. I would like some advice from Slashdot on what Free Software tools I should use, with an emphasis on scripting efficiency. I am planning on using hyperlinked PDF for the final book format. To date I have used LateX for writing basic papers and have created vector images using Xfig and raster images edited using The GIMP. I used dvipdfm to convert my results into PDF. What I haven't done is create a hyperlinked PDF document, or generated xfig, postscript or any other vector image format through software, or worked on any document project of this magnitude before. I have thought about using raster images, my current software used for web content similar to what will go into the book creates raster images which I convert to PNG, this works well because the images are fairly simple diagrams with few colors and compress very well. I estimate that the 200 or so images I need for my book would require about 10K each as high-res PNGs for a total of 2 MB. This sounds acceptable, but would probably be smaller with higher image quality in vector format. Are LaTeX, Xfig and dvipdfm the answers, or do I need to look in other directions?"

Comments

DocBook

[Doug Dante]

Docbook generates neat and professional HTML and PDF documents cross referenced as you require. It also does PostScript suitable for most professional printers.

http://www.docbook.org/

Like HTML, it supports embedding all media types, including images, videos, sounds, and Java Applets.

Lout

[killmenow]

Check out lout. I found it easier to work with than LaTeX. YMMV.

If you can wait, you may also consider using Jeff's followup to lout, Nonpareil. The specs are done, but he's still working on a compiler.