[ANN] Early release of "cop-e-boox" customized DocBook stylesheets - your feedback appreciated

[Dave Gardiner <info@xmplar.biz>]

I have been developing stylesheets to produce PDF, EPUB 3 and HTML5 web pages, and would like to release them for the interest of DocBook developers. This is a near-final version that includes an innovative visual interface to the stylesheets using SVG. I'm very aware of usability testing before a product goes to market, so (in the spirit of "free-range" user testing) I'd like to get people's opinions about whether it's easy to use and covers features for basic ebook production. Please enjoy!

Cop-e-boox is a bundle of customised stylesheets to produce ebook formats from structured XML files. It is an open-source package for structured single-source publishing, which lets you set up document styles to produce PDF, EPUB 3.0 and HTML5 (web page) ebook formats. You can think of cop-e-boox as a typesetting package for XML content that allows you to easily set up page layout and document structure, and change text and graphics styles. Cop-e-boox is designed as an entry-level starter kit for single-source desktop publishing and aims to provide a learning tool as an introduction to the technologies used for digital publishing with XML.

 

INSTALLATION

1. In a web browser go to the URL: http://xmleditoz.net.au/copeboox/copeboox-master.zip.

2. Download the zipped file "copeboox-master.zip" (38Mb) to a temporary location on your computer's file system (e.g. Desktop).

3. Unzip the folder copeboox-master.zip and extract all files to a directory that you have read and write access to. This will create a new directory /copeboox-master, which contains all components of cop-e-boox.

4. In your computer system's file manager, open the directory /copeboox-master.

5. In a web browser open the file "start-here-for-everything.html". That file has an overview of all components of cop-e-boox.

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Dave Gardiner