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

[Boris Schäling <boris@highscore.de>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Boris Schäling [mailto:boris@highscore.de]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:20 AM
> To: 'Keith Fahlgren'
> Cc: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [docbook] ePub: Title page missing and ToC in spine?

> [...] 
> 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?

Meanwhile I know why OEBPS/index.html is neither referenced in the
<manifest> nor <spine> section: 

1) The template opf.manifest applies templates to many elements but not to
the simple book element. There is "//d:book[*[last()][self::d:bookinfo]]"
and "//d:book[d:bookinfo]" but not just "/d:book" (line 837 to 865). 

2) The template to match the many elements from 1) and to create a reference
in the <manifest> section matches "d:book[parent::d:set]",
"d:book[*[last()][self::d:bookinfo]]" and "d:book[d:bookinfo]" but again not
"d:book" (line 1089 to 1113). This is the template with the comment
"Warning: While the test indicate this match list is accurate, it may need
further tweaking to ensure _never_ dropping generated content (XHTML) from
the manifest (OPF file)". 

3) There is a variable root.is.a.chunk automatically set to 0 or 1 at the
beginning of the ePub style sheet. I don't know what this variable does and
why it's not always set to 1 (as the ePub style sheet always chunks the root
file is always a chunk?). However it's set to 0 for "/d:book". This is a
problem later in the template opf.spine: If root.is.a.chunk is 0 a spine is
created for "/*/*" instead of "/*" - and "/*/*" of course excludes
"/d:book". 

With the first two changes a reference to index.html appears in the
<manifest> section. With the third change a reference to index.html is added
to the <spine> section. After these changes when I open the ePub file I see
the title page of the book. 

While this all works with the book I'm experimenting with I don't know if
there are use cases where the predicates applied to the book node make
sense? Simply removing them might have side effects? Setting root.is.a.chunk
always to 1 might have side effects, too? But there is someone who wrote
this code and should know? :-) 

Boris 

> [...]