1. Convert an intriguing site (Python for Fun) from html to epub to enable easy mobile or tablet reading while offline. Automate that process for future sites which I enjoy and which have far more content than I can consume in one sitting.




2. Convert an existing PDF (Children of the Ark) document into a living editable wiki/web site. There are plenty of static PDFs which beg to be opened for editing by the public. Our game beta is just one of them.




3. Convert select topics and posts from this blog into a transportable epub friendly format. I often refer to earlier blog posts. It’s fun to review what and how I thought before, and how my understanding has changed with time. Some readers prefer focused batches of content in pamphlet and book forms. I should be able to easily deliver that by organizing a few dozen posts into bundled ebook content.

This morning’s post discusses a first crack at the former. I’m hung up at a reasonable quality PDF to ePub stage. Another path of going directly from html to ePub may prove more fruitful.

Scanning the web for tools

After reading a number of questionable looking sites providing enormous amounts of information about how to use their $40-50 dollar tool to convert from one format to another I happened upon a google code tool called wkhtmltopdf. This provided the foundation for the conversion from html to pdf, one step in converting to a bundled format. I documented the transformation of Python for Fun into PDF form on github, and it was straightforward.

What is wkhtmltopdf?

Description

Simple shell utility to convert html to pdf using the webkit rendering engine, and qt.

Introduction

Searching the web, I have found several command line tools that allow you to convert a HTML-document to a PDF-document, however they all seem to use their own, and rather incomplete rendering engine, resulting in poor quality. Recently QT 4.4 was released with a WebKit widget (WebKit is the engine of Apples Safari, which is a fork of the KDE KHtml), and making a good tool became very easy. (from wkhtmltopdf site)

Here’s how I proceeded so far:

Converted local html to pdf with wkhtmltopdf
Script:

/Applications/wkhtmltopdf cover index.html collection.html toc lode/lode.html buckets/buckets.html tower/tower.html animal/animal.html gui/tkPhone.html gui/sqlPhone.html gui/wxPhone.html erlang/erlang.html erlang/erlang2.html forth/forth.html lisp/lisp.html prolog/intro.html prolog/prolog1.html prolog/prolog2.html prolog/prolog3.html huffman/huffman.html rtn/rtn.html sir/sir.html unicode/unicode.html logic/logic.html logic2/logic2.html mm/simulator.html mm/assembler.html mm/compiler.html sql/sql.html wave/wave.html py4fun.pdf

output pdf:
py4fun.pdf

1. First attempt at pdf to epub:
   

   uploaded and converted pdf to epub with 2epub.com

   1. Browse to pdf file
   2. upload file
   3. download epub

   First epub:
   orig_py4fun.epub (360kbytes)

   But the links weren’t working in that file on my iOS devices…

2. Second try:
   

   I used the Mac Store PDF Converter (by Shenzhen Wondershare Software Co. Ltd) to create py4fun.epub (11mbytes). The quality of the output epub was much lower than the free version.
   output file: deleted.

3. Third try:
   

   I snagged Lexcycle Stanza for the desktop. It imported the PDF kinda funky and requested access to a PDF viewer. Begrudgingly, I reinstalled Adobe’s PDF reader again (~420mbytes) and it opened the file fine. But this time the option to export to epub wasn’t available. Bollocks!

Unfortunately the process of transforming the PDF to ePub file proved even more frustrating. The first site I tried broke all the internal hyperlinks (2epub.com), but at least created a mostly readable epub file (some code sample formatting was lost).

The second tool I tried was a $60 dollar download from the Mac App Store, so I expected a high quality product. Instead what I purchased was a steaming pile of crap. It generated a huge output file (~30 times the size of the free epub file) full of broken hyper links and random blank pages. Definitely do not buy that terrible software: PDF Converter (by Shenzhen Wondershare Software Co. Ltd).

1) Screening — ubiquitous screens everywhere, and all things on every screen. We are becoming people of the screen

2) Interacting — we’ll interact with books with gestures, voices, hands, and in non-linear modes

3) Sharing — reading will become an increasing social activity, and books will weave together into a shared library

4) Accessing — shifting from owning books to having instant, constant access to books

5) Flowing — moving away from static, fixed pages to streams and flows, as in Twitter, RSS feeds, Facebook walls, Netflix, lifeblogs.

6) Generating — value will come from uncopyable attributes generated around books instead of in copies of books.

I concur with the majority of Mr. Kelly’s list, with a couple of caveats and an addition. 

I believe Kevin has undervalued the precious nature of concentrated attention. I foresee a backlash to unfocused stream based scanning. If my own habits are correlated to future trends, readers will seek dedicated, quiet, and concentrated reading on personal devices. Interaction is a placeholder for communication of relevance, and there’s little doubt that structured annotations, search and ongoing scans of published works will result in topic subscription, social curation, focused search, and batch reading activity cycles.

The future form of the book is not something we can imagine without a complete disconnect from legacy printed structure. Story telling and documentation will adopt forms which best enable authors to express themselves to their primary audience. An evolving description language will disrupt limited utility fixed forms (html vs ePub standards).

If we’re predicting the future of storytelling and the distribution of knowledge, why not make a far out guess. It’s possible that we will project the act of live storytelling globally. Instead of physical screens why not tap directly into the imagination of readers and listeners by bypassing optical and auditory channels, and connect directly to higher level yet more abstract receptors. If you’ve ever been fully immersed in a brilliant book, been swallowed by a fantastic film, or moved with a mind blowing live concert you can relate to artists transcending the medium, and connecting directly to a primal part of our minds.

I’ve included Kevin’s TOC talk below:

Early last year I spent a few weeks gathering a number of my early blog posts into an ebook format (3 Steps to Satisfaction). It took me several weeks of part time work, and the final format was less than professional. Sure there are plenty of tools to aid manual conversion of ebook formats, but they have annoying glitches and require plenty of hands on editing to wade through. For my next blog to ebook* I’ve decided to go with a pro, and that decision has never been easier.

A life long^ friend of mine is leveraging his design skills in an area that myself and many others need a hand with: professionally converting blogs and books to various ebook formats. Aakin has over a decade of experience doing professional layout work for convention pamplets, books, and has added blog editing and conversion at my request. Trust me when I write that he is a wizard of formatting prowess. We’ll soon be releasing a free game book showing off his skills (he co-authored and edited COTA). I invite you to explore the details and negotiate specifics of your project or conversion at Ars Vox. It’s as easy as sending an email, and covering a few hours of modest labor.

This simple act will:

• bring your blog message to an entirely different reader segment
• or take an existing book and reach a much larger and growing audience of ebook readers

If you have any project that requires professional layout and design, Ars Vox is the perfect way to get it done.

Notes:

*= I’m considering spinning two ebooks out of last years posts from April ‘09-10

^= after 15 years of being a close friend, you get the life long friend status to conceal my rapidly increasing age  . Aakin and I have been like brothers since college around 1992.