[LINK] RFI: Cross-Media Publishing under Linux/OO

[Tom Worthington]

On 04/08/11 11:25, Roger Clarke wrote:

> (The idea is to buy a pre-IOS Mac, dual-bootable with Linux ...

Might be simpler to buy a second Linux only computer. I am very happy 
with my Kogan Agora 12 inch Laptop running Ubuntu: 
http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/06/kogan-agora-laptop-at-sydney-linux.html

> But I can't see how to replicate my convenient publishing environment ...

When you work that out the world will beat a path to your door. ;-)

I looked at some of the e-Book options, which are not quite good enough 
yet, for revising my book "Green ICT": 
http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/07/e-learning-course-on-green-ict_23.html

Previously I used LaTex for two books, the first being "Net Traveler" in 
1999: http://www.tomw.net.au/nt/introduction.html

LaTex produces excellent book typesetting, particularly for academic 
books. But at the time the HTML/LaTex conversion tools were limited. 
Also I used the command line interface for everything. WYSIWYG tools 
like Lyx should make that easier, although I have not yet tried it: 
http://www.lyx.org/

A major issue is that HTML, even the versions used for ebooks (such as 
XHTML for EPUB) do not have more than basic markup built in. Footnotes 
and references have to be built from basic constructs, such as hypertext 
links and targets. You are reliant on specific software to keep track of 
these for you and render them correctly. You can't compose your document 
directly in HTML, if you want footnotes and references.

LaTex has footnotes and references built in, but you then have to live 
in the LaTex world. In theory it should be possible for LaTex to produce 
very good EPUB eBooks easily (as EPUB is just a form of XHTML), but so 
far I have not seen this done well.

My requirement are complicated by also needing to address e-learning 
formats (such as IMS Content Packages). Like eBook formats these 
e-learning formats are based on HTML and so in theory could be generated 
from the same source document. But in practice there are few proven tools.

As the Learning Management System I use (Moodle) has an eBook format 
built in, it is most likely I will author in that, accept it does not 
have proper referencing and convert the output to EPUB and PDF with 
assorted tools. But first I will try Lyx. My computer science colleagues 
have been saying "Why don't you just use LaTex?" for more than a decade 
and they may well be right. ;-)


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards 
Legislation

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra