RE: [docbook] ePub: Title page missing and ToC in spine?

[Boris Schäling <boris@highscore.de>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Fahlgren [mailto:abdelazer@gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 12:13 AM
> To: Boris Schäling
> Cc: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [docbook] ePub: Title page missing and ToC in spine?

Hi Keith, 

> [...] 
> > * ePub files contain a XHTML file for the title page (the one
> generated by
> > the DocBook style sheets anyway) but the file isn't referenced
> anywhere.
> 
> Would you please be more specific on what you mean for the "title
> page"? I'm not sure what you mean.

I'm talking about http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/HTMLTitlePage.html and
the book.titlepage template in xhtml/titlepage.templates.xsl. As the ePub
style sheet creates chunks there is also a XHTML file created for the title
page. This file is called index.html (according to the parameter
root.filename; see
http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/doc/html/root.filename.ht
ml). For my books the title page typically contains the book title, name of
the author, license, a version number etc. 

Anyway this is all done automatically by the DocBook style sheets. It's also
done when the ePub converter is used. If I look into the .epub file I can
see a file OEBPS/index.html. However this file (the book's title page) isn't
referenced in content.opf: It's shipped with the .epub file but it's not
used. Ideally an entry is added to all sections in content.opf? 

> [...] 
> Over time, more ePub reading systems have improved their support for
> TOC navigation via NCX. At this time, I personally recommend that
> XHTML TOCs are *not* included in ePubs for general consumption, and
> that ePub authors work instead on providing rich NCX documents. IIRC,
> you can turn off XHTML TOCs by editing the generate.toc parameter in
> your customization layer
> (http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/TOCcontrol.html).

Thanks for the recommendation! Then it makes sense if the style sheet didn't
create a XHTML TOC by default? If no XHTML TOC is created though it makes
definitely sense to add the title page (see above :-) to the <spine>
section. Currently the XHTML TOC is the first entry in the spine. If there
is no XHTML TOC anymore books would immediately start with the first chapter
(or preface). - I guess I should create a patch and upload it to
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=21935&atid=373749? 

Boris