Ask Slashdot: Composing an e-Book With a Couple of Bells and Whistles

New submitter Cbhihe writes: I want to edit an e-book, a scientific textbook to be distributed on the Kindle tablet to be exact. The book is written. For that I used LibreOffice.
It comes complete with index, drawings, pictures, formulae and its present look and feel is no different from the majority of scientific text, you might be accustomed to browsing. I need advice for the next step, which consists in making this digital pile of data suitable for an e-book.. with a slight twist. The e-book should allow for:
— picture zoom-in in pop-ups on screen
— allow in-text basic interactivity, e.g. when in a exercise, multiple answers are proposed, each answer when clicked should display "Right" or "Wrong" (for instance).
Can you recommend, if not a commercial package that allows such features right out of the box, then at least and preferably open-source technology needed for me to achieve what I want ? I am willing to get down to moderate programming to use your suggested solution. I am conversant in C, C++ and getting there with Python.

Comments

HTML

[Anonymous Coward]

Just be HTML+javascript. Then you'll have modern Kindles (assuming they can run web browsers) and the other 99% of the market too!

Re:HTML

[Anonymous Coward]

Just be HTML+javascript. Then you'll have modern Kindles (assuming they can run web browsers) and the other 99% of the market too!

I think you're off by one here. I think the OP wants an e-book format, of which there are several, however he does not want to be constrained by the existing formats, which....is not possible.

Re: HTML

[cas2000]

epub is HTML + CSS + images + some metadata files (e.g. the table of contents) in a .zip file (with filename 'extension' .epub rather than .zip).

Libreoffice can export to HTML, which will get the bulk of the job done. Then the OP could use Sigil (http://sigil-ebook.com/ - packaged for several linux distros including Debian) to edit the HTML into shape as an epub book.

I've never written a book using Sigil, but I have used it many times to fix problems with bought epubs - hard-coded tiny crappy fonts, missing or broken Table of Contents and other suckage.

--------

Zooming images etc is something that is not the OP's responsibility - that task (and all other presentation tasks) are handled by the reader's epub viewer program - e.g. whatever the default is on Kindle, plus FBReader, Moon Reader, Cool Reader and many more on Android, and whatever epub viewers run on ipads etc.

FBReader and Calibre and others on Linux PCs, and Windows and Mac too (plus they probably have many more).

LaTeX classes are one answer

[Anonymous Coward]

The LaTeX class "memoir", plus the equation-typesetting package "amsmath", combined with pop-up packages that include "fancytooltips", "fancy-preview", "cooltooltips", and "pdfcomment", in aggregate provide the requested functionality. The LaTeX/memoir/amsmath learning curve is steep however.

So...

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

You want to publish an e-book but you also want to be able to do things that e-books can't do.

Re:So...

[BitterOak]

You want to publish an e-book but you also want to be able to do things that e-books can't do.

That's kind of the point. It will make his e-book new and innovative. That's how progress happens.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

. It will make his e-book new and innovative. That's how progress happens.

No, that would make a new e-book format new and innovative. Progress in terms of new features happens by updating the application and formats to support new features, not by making a new book that can't be actually expressed in existing formats. You sound like a business type of person trying to sell something that doesn't exist without consulting your technical staff, "Our new e-book will include VR experiences for people with Kindles," "Sir, that is not possible with the ebook format," "But saying it is not possible is not how progress happens."

Re: So...

[samkass]

Apple's does. It can do all this and more, and there are tons of interactive educational materials done this way But it doesn't fit his open source or kindle requirements. So while it's not true that no format can do it, it's not an answer to his question.

Re:So...

[KermodeBear]

Sorry, but doing what HTML+JavaScript was doing 20 years ago, just in a different container, is not innovative.

Re:So...

[ihtoit]

There are audio CDs that have image data, but they're not Redbook. Redbook audio is just that: audio.

Re:So...

[tlhIngan]

That's kind of the point. It will make his e-book new and innovative. That's how progress happens.

Except since it hasn't happened, the market pretty much must've rejected it.

I mean, Apple has iBooks Author, which is a free (beer, on OS X) application for creating "rich" books which can be exported to PDF or EPUB. (There's a licensing thing in there - if you want to sell the book for money, you have to have it approved by Apple for sale in the iBookstore. But if it's free, go nuts - distribute how you see fit). They run on iPad, which is still one of the more popular tablets on there. And aside from the initial hype on release, well, most of it has died out it seems.

I mean, yes, it's Apple proprietary at the moment, because ebooks aren't supposed to have such support and when you're the only one doing it, well, there you go.

If it was a good idea, then Amazon and everyone else would've copied the ideas and implement their own solution, which then will attract the attention of standards bodies to create a standard "rich" ebook format.

Apple still supports the software so it can be used to create rich ebooks. But the market has spoken and rich ebooks are not on the menu, unless you're an Apple owner. Probably because it's easier to do as an app...

Kindles can't do this

[Ozoner]

The paperwhite Kindles are hopeless at showing images.

They can't do what you are asking (zoom, etc).

This has nothing to do with whatever software you used to create the file.

Re:Kindles can't do this

[John Bokma]

I own a Kindle touch and it can actually zoom, hold your finger on the image for a while.

suggestions from a small publisher

[bitingduck]

If you want equations to come out reasonably, you have to use EPUB 3 or iBooks Author (which isn't open source). The problem you're going to find with EPUB 3 is that most readers don't support it yet, and you might have to distribute it yourself. I have a small publishing company and we recently did a book full of equations and ended up publishing it only on iTunes/iBooks and our own site. It has the equations done in MathML so you can copy and paste them into other things. Most of your other features are things we haven't tried to implement, but I suspect will cause the old EPUB 2.x validators to barf (even if it's valid EPUB 2, many distributors are using old validators).

As far as tools, we tend to export things from Indesign (because a lot of our books are in dead tree format, too) and then fix them up with BBEdit, TextMate, or Sigil. Sigil is nice because it will render the book for you. BBEdit will open a properly zipped up epub file package and let you hand edit things inside, but it doesn't do any of the cross-file updating that Sigil does (e.g. if you change a file name it will get updated where appropriate in Sigil, but you have to do it by hand in BBEdit). TextMate doesn't open epub packages directly, but it's useful as an editor (and any other text editor with regex support will serve you about the same). BBEdit and TextMate both have good regex support (more so than Sigil). I'm partial to BBEdit, while our other editor is partial to TextMate. We have a little "tech tips" section on our main site that describes how we export a word file and make an epub from it (it should be about the same with OO), as well as how we do references. Unfortunately there aren't any good epub editors available yet that support references in a reasonable way. Assuming you can figure out the EPUB 3 implementation of the features you want, you should be able to do most of what you need with a good text editor that has good regex support.

You can run your final product through Epubcheck 3 (or whatever version you want) and verify that it's valid. Most distributors use some flavor of epubcheck 2.x and will reject it if your file throws any errors. They may or may not accurately tell you the errors, and like any compiler, you can sometimes fix 30 pages of errors by putting in the correct bit of punctuation just before where the first error is thrown.

Re:Calibre

[bitingduck]

Calibre is nice for converting among formats but doesn't support detailed editing of the source files. If you just stick an OO formatted file in and have it convert, it will do it, but you're likely to need a lot of hand tweaking to get it to look like you want and pass the validators.

Kindle or features - pick one

[maggard]

The Kindle ebooks doesn't do what you're asking for. So either drop the Kindle ebook requirement or abandon those interactive features. My recommended alternative would be a small website. If the hardware has a basic web browser with JavaScript support what you want is trivially doable. FWIW a TiddlyWiki would be very appropriate; self-contained, portable, your content can be easily adapted to it, and extensible for your needs.

You described a Web Page or an App

[Schezar]

What you described is not an ebook, and there is no good reason to overload "ebook" with all of what you intend.

A web page or dedicated app is what you want. Make a phone app and/or a web site with a modern framework. Most people have tablets/phones, which will already render and interact with those formats just fine.

E-readers are specialized and limited devices that have a shrinking, not growing, user base. Tablets are surpassing them rapidly. There is literally no good reason to do what you are trying to do with any "ebook" format.

Re:You described a Web Page or an App

[bitingduck]

What you described is not an ebook, and there is no good reason to overload "ebook" with all of what you intend.

There's every good reason to "overload" an ebook with the features that the OP asked for. Many people (probably more than ever) are reading their ebooks on tablets that are perfectly capable of rendering all the features identified, and more. It's quite reasonable to want to put all of that into a neatly packaged file that a person can dl to their tablet and use offline. It's so reasonable that the group that defines the EPUB format has updated the format to support HTML5 in EPUB 3.0, which would be how those features all get implemented. The people who make readers haven't kept up with that-- most readers are still limited to EPUB 2, and many distributors are still using outdated versions of EPUBcheck to validate files, so they reject perfectly valid EPUB 2 files because they're too lazy to update their validator (which is free and open source).

As a reader of scientific material, I would like to see many of the features that the OP requested-- I read quite a few electronically published papers and books, and unfortunately the most common format remains flat PDF, which kind of sucks for reading technical content on a small tablet. An html based format (like EPUB) that encapsulates the whole paper or book, including scalable images and graphs, copyable equations, and video where appropriate, would be a much preferable format. And don't say "just read it off the web". I do read it off the web, but I also download papers to archive, and if the publisher disappears (it happens) or I stop having access to that publisher (e.g. my employer's library drops the subscription), I'd still like to be able to read the article in its entirety, along with all the multimedia supplements.

Latex and Our Choice

[fermion]

First, it annoys me to now end to have to read a 'science' book published in a word processor. It looks ugly and unprofessional and incompetent. It is just my opinion, and I am not going to embarrass anyone by showing examples, but suffice it to say 25 years ago when MS Words was cool we did not know any better, but now if you are doing a science book, do it in LaTex. It will make updates easier.

Two, look at the Push Pop press technology which published Al Gore's Incontinent Truth, now called Our Choice. Aside from the politics, the technology in the book is everything the post asked for. I am pretty sure it publishes the book as an APP, but as mentioned an ebook is an extremely limited format, especially on a kindle.

Re:Latex and Our Choice

[c0d3g33k]

First, it annoys me to now end to have to read a 'science' book published in a word processor. It looks ugly and unprofessional and incompetent. It is just my opinion, and I am not going to embarrass anyone by showing examples, but suffice it to say 25 years ago when MS Words was cool we did not know any better, but now if you are doing a science book, do it in LaTex. It will make updates easier.

Two, look at the Push Pop press technology which published Al Gore's Incontinent Truth, now called Our Choice. Aside from the politics, the technology in the book is everything the post asked for. I am pretty sure it publishes the book as an APP, but as mentioned an ebook is an extremely limited format, especially on a kindle.

It annoys me to no end to read posts with errors like: "... it annoys me to now end", "MS Words" (it's MS Word), "Al Gore's Incontinent Truth" (it's 'An Inconvenient Truth'). Most annoying is getting the capitalization of LaTeX wrong (it's not "LaTex"). It looks ugly and unprofessional and most certainly incompetent.

Re:Latex and Our Choice

[BitZtream]

but suffice it to say 25 years ago when MS Words was cool we did not know any better, but now if you are doing a science book, do it in LaTex.

Tex was the format of choice 25 years ago, and Word wasn't cool then either.

The kindle is an extremely limited device which simply isn't going to do what he wants regardless of format.

He wants EPUB 3 or iBooks, probably iBooks since its pretty freaking awesome once you get over the shitty side of it being so locked into Apple which means you aren't going to use it since its really worthless outside of Apple :( Damn shame.

Re:Latex and Our Choice

[plcurechax]

First, it annoys me to now end to have to read a 'science' book published in a word processor. It looks ugly and unprofessional and incompetent.

While I strongly encourage science, technical, and academics to consider using TeX / LaTeX for technical or academic documents, not everyone will. There is a learning requirement, and while in my opinion the productivity gains of dealing with equations in TeX rather than in a word processor (even if it has an equation editor) will normally offset the time to learn such new / different system, not everyone will make same conclusion, even with the modern TeX / LaTeX editors / IDE such as TeXmaker, TeXstudio, Lyx.

I certainly have read technical books and articles written in a word processor that were ugly and far less polished looking than the default output in LaTeX, correctly prepared word processed documents can produce adequate output.

It has been a while since I've last looked, but at that time none of the e-readers devices supported MathML embedded in EPUB3, and the most common formats required equations be included as images (poor legibility) in order to be reliable across readers from different vendors, or even readable across user font selection in a single e-book reader.

Two, look at the Push Pop press technology which published Al Gore's Incontinent Truth, now called Our Choice. [...] I am pretty sure it publishes the book as an APP, but as mentioned an ebook is an extremely limited format, especially on a kindle.

Yes, all the advanced and/or interactive science or technical electronic books that I've seen have been published as Apps, not in an e-reader formats (epub, mobi, etc.), and in particular I believe they have been all iOS-only apps.

Good luck with that!

[Peter (Professor) Fo]

(1) Kindles and (much better) e-books don't do that. You might as well have asked for a flying pogo-stick.

(2) You may be confusing pop-up with box-out or even foot-note. If you want the 'less accomplished' to keep up then you can't do it with pop-ups[1] Instead write two books.

(3) An e-book reader is not a multi-media volcano of goodness. The opposite: A constrained text reader with occasional images and no character.

[Footnote 1] Note that a box-out remains in clear view forever. A pop-up vanishes after first use, so after being shown it isn't there for re-reference. A footnote a diversion for someone with a particular interest.

Re:iBook .

[TrancePhreak]

iBooks only work on iOS devices. The iBooks application states specifically that you are only to use it to develop books for the iOS platform as well.

Re:Calibre

[cas2000]

you need to keep up-to-date, too.

Sigil 0.92 was released on Dec 18 2015.

here's what the latest entry on http://sigil-ebook.com/ says:

Sigil-0.9.2 Released
December 18, 2015 ~ kevinbhendricks

Sigil 0.9.2 is a bug fix and stability improvement release of the stable Sigil-0.9.X series. It includes all of the changes and improvements so far and it has shown itself to be very stable in testing. Most of the changes from our last release Sigil-0.9.1 are bug fixes:

Bug Fixes:

      . Update BuildingOnLinux docs
      . Update Building on Mac OS X docs
      . Fix example clips/searches loading on Linux
      . Simplify UseBundledInterpreter Logic
      . Fix bug when adding existing html links to stylesheets not being updated
      . Fix bug in Well-Formed error messages due to bug inside gumboâ(TM)s error.c
      . Add xmlns=âhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml attribute to html tag if missing
      . Fix lost DOCTYPE info when splitting or merging
      . Completely rework pretty printing via gumbo to be much more robust
      . Make identification and storage of page-map.xml more robust
      . Restore Sigilâ(TM)s update checker thatâ(TM)s been broken for a while
      . Update sigil_bs4 prettyprint_xhtml and serialize_xhtml routines to use logic of code in GumboInterface
      . Update sigil_bs4 to use numeric entities when faced with nbsp so they do not get lost later in Sigil
      . Fix bugs in sigil_bs4/prettyprint_xhtml and serialize_xhtml routines that failed to handle some void tags properly
      . Fix out of date error message referencing Tidy
      . Coerce missing or bad doctypes to meet either epub2 or epub3 standard
      . Inject empty title tag if missing from head
      . Html escape Index entry text used to create index.html

Improvements:

      . Include Pull Request 161 by pinotree âoeSwitch TempFolder to QTemporaryDirâ to improve safety
      . Preliminary Linux binary installer support added
      . Add ability to change Sigilâ(TM)s user preferences directory by specifying a new path via the SIGIL_PREFS_DIR environment variable (path must be user-writable).

User Interface Changes:

      . Add some keyboard accelerators to the Spell Check dialogue see Sigil Issue# 164
      . Completely revamp Cleaning to use âoeMend Codeâ and remove PrettyPrintGumbo as on option
      . Rename PrettyPrintGumbo to âoeMend and Prettifyâ and move to CodeView Right-click menu and Tools Menu
      . Rename âoeSanity Checkâ to âoeWell-Formed Check EPUBâ and remove check icon people confused with FlightCrew
      . Change ToValidXHTML by using serialize not prettyprint

It is hoped this release will provide a stable and up-to-date version of Sigil while development work continues on adding some additional epub3 support features.

Re:Exactly

[stajp]

The problem of EPUB is that HTML5 is supported in EPUB3. EPUB2 suggested _not using_ JavaScript - some EPUB2 readers do support JavaScript, but mostly they don't. EPUB3 leaves the option of supporting JavaScript?!?

And there lies the problem: Making a self supportive HTML5 (+CSS+JS) page is not that hard. Somebody else suggested that for quizzes and self-learning you need a Moodle server - you don't. Android and IOS browsers support local storage (a few MB, but still storage) in JS. If JS is used than the OP can get zooming he wants. All that is supported in EPUB3 - if there were a decent EPUB3 readers.

The OP should start training in frontend web development (mostly JavaScript). Convert everything to HTML+CSS+JS. Find a suitable JS code if needed (something like http://dublintech.blogspot.hr/... ). Pack it as ZIP. Ship it to users.

Or don't

[Spazmania]

Or just don't try to build an interactive ebook in the first place. Link the question to the answer key in the back (hypertext is good) but don't fill in or pop up answers. Let a book be a book.

This is the major mistake folks make with powerpoint presentations. Animations and fancy crap that get in the way of digesting the material on the slide.