how to transform DocBook to EPUB

[rob-pub]

Hi there

I'm a newbie to <oXygen/> and am looking for a tutorial / step by step guide on how to transform DocBook 5.0 XML into an EPUB. Had a look round and can't see anything which surprised me a bit.

Your help is much appreciated.

[adrian]

Hello,

Currently(v11.2) Oxygen doesn't provide the means to transform DocBook to EPUB out-of-the-box. We do plan to support this in a future version of Oxygen. I've added your vote to this feature on our issue tracking tool.

Currently you need some additional tools and I'm afraid they aren't very friendly.

There is a free Python/XSLT application(docbook2epub) that does this but requires Python and DocBook XSL and it takes some fiddling to make it work. You can find it here:
http://code.google.com/p/epub-tools/

There's yet another free tool that does the same in the form of a Ruby script. Again, not that simple to deploy and make it work:
http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/ ... rent/epub/
http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/ ... pub/README

These tools were pretty much built to be used in Linux so not sure how much more complicated things can get if you need them in Windows.

Regards,
Adrian

[amix]

A similar question just came up in the xsl-list. There is a project, that does TEILite to HTML conversion, but also has TEILite to EPUB styles. I am aware, that TEI is not DocBook, but I thought it fits the question and may be interesting to some.

[msarrel]

Please add my vote as well for a DocBook to ePUB transformation. That would be very useful for us.

[Radu]

Hi,

Oxygen 12.2 will come with predefined Docbook to EPUB (and to WebHelp) ANT scenarios.
It will also integrate the EPUB Checker which will report validation problems in EPUB archives.
Oxygen 12.2 will be available in a couple of months.

Regards,
Radu

[dcdenison]

That's fantastic news. Can't wait.