Publishing a Book as PDF and ePub.

Publishing a Book as PDF and ePub.

[Ian Barton]

Next year our mountaineering club has its 50th anniversary. On the
21st anniversary we published a book of articles written by members of
the club. Luckily the text was written in WordPerfect and I have
converted it to a series of org-mode files, one per chapter. For the
upcoming 50th anniversary we want to make the book available in both
pdf and ePub or mobi format.

Creating ePub doesn't look too hard by exporting to html and using
something like Calibre to make the ePub/mobi file. However, as a Latex
neophyte I was wondering which of the several Latex packages would be
suitable. The structure of the book is very simple. No tables or
formulae but has some photos and cartoons, which I have scanned from
the originals.

All I need is something that will let me format chapter headings,
author attributions and produce a TOC. Templates like Memoir seem to
be vast overkill for my needs and have documentation several times
longer than our book!


--
Best wishes,

Ian.

Re: Publishing a Book as PDF and ePub.

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-11-02, at 16:37, Ian Barton <lists@wilkesley.net> wrote:

> Next year our mountaineering club has its 50th anniversary. On the
> 21st anniversary we published a book of articles written by members of
> the club. Luckily the text was written in WordPerfect and I have
> converted it to a series of org-mode files, one per chapter. For the
> upcoming 50th anniversary we want to make the book available in both
> pdf and ePub or mobi format.
>
> Creating ePub doesn't look too hard by exporting to html and using
> something like Calibre to make the ePub/mobi file. However, as a Latex
> neophyte I was wondering which of the several Latex packages would be
> suitable. The structure of the book is very simple. No tables or
> formulae but has some photos and cartoons, which I have scanned from
> the originals.
>
> All I need is something that will let me format chapter headings,
> author attributions and produce a TOC. Templates like Memoir seem to
> be vast overkill for my needs and have documentation several times
> longer than our book!

I agree that memoir might not be the best idea.  (I had bad experience
with it, probably mainly due to its monolithic design.)

One way would be the koma-script packages.  (I never used them, but many
people are satisfied with them.)

Also, the TeX showcase (https://www.tug.org/texshowcase/) might give you
some inspiration.

And if you are brave enough, you might want to look at ConTeXt:
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page .  It is an alternative (i.e.,
not LaTeX-related), TeX-based typesetting engine.  IMHO it is more
advanced (at least typographically) and /much/ better designed than
LaTeX.  It seems there is no ConTeXt exporter for Org-mode (however,
this should not be difficult to fix).  One of he advantages of ConTeXt
is that it supposedly can produce an Epub ebook (though this never
worked for me - OTOH, I tried it some three years ago, and I would guess
the progress might be substantial).  Another is an active and helpful
(albeit small compared to LaTeX's) community.

Also, if/when you have /specific/ questions on how to achieve something
in LaTeX, http://tex.stackexchange.com/ is a good place to ask
questions.  (It is much friendlier and relaxed than SO, btw.)

Hth

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: Publishing a Book as PDF and ePub.

[Eric S Fraga]

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On Monday,  2 Nov 2015 at 15:37, Ian Barton wrote:
> Next year our mountaineering club has its 50th anniversary. On the
> 21st anniversary we published a book of articles written by members of
> the club. 
[...]

> However, as a Latex
> neophyte I was wondering which of the several Latex packages would be
> suitable.

The book class may be enough for you.  In org, it is trivial to
use.  Simply put the line

#+latex_class: book

in your org file and export to pdf (C-c C-e l p).  Top level headlines
are parts, second level headlines are chapters, third level headlines
are section headings, etc.

I've attached a very small org file and the resulting PDF.

If you need to customise the output, you can look at the settings of
org-latex-classes.  If you have any specific needs, just ask here!
-- 
: Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 25.0.50.2, Org release_8.3.2-209-gba4d33

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #2: t.org --]
[-- Type: text/x-org, Size: 306 bytes --]

#+title: This is my book
#+latex_class: book
* The main part of the book
** The first chapter
*** Introduction
This is some text.
** The second chapter
*** Motivation
This is some more text.
** The first chapter
*** Results
This is some text with an image

[[file:~/s/test/mip.png][file:~/s/test/mip.png]]

[-- Attachment #3: t.pdf --]
[-- Type: application/pdf, Size: 79513 bytes --]

Re: Publishing a Book as PDF and ePub.

[Ian Barton]

On Tue, Nov 03, 2015 at 10:56:14AM +0000, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Monday,  2 Nov 2015 at 15:37, Ian Barton wrote:
> > Next year our mountaineering club has its 50th anniversary. On the
> > 21st anniversary we published a book of articles written by members of
> > the club.
> [...]
>
> > However, as a Latex
> > neophyte I was wondering which of the several Latex packages would be
> > suitable.
>
> The book class may be enough for you.  In org, it is trivial to
> use.  Simply put the line
>

Thanks, that looks as though it will do what I need and much simpler
than KOMA scrbook.

--
Best wishes,

Ian.

Re: Publishing a Book as PDF and ePub.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Thursday,  5 Nov 2015 at 20:34, Ian Barton wrote:
> Thanks, that looks as though it will do what I need and much simpler
> than KOMA scrbook.

Once you are comfortable with the default book class, you can consider
moving to the KOMA equivalent as it *is* much nicer and allows you to
control all aspects, should you need to.  But you might not need to!

Let us know how you get on.
-- 
: Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 24.5.1, Org release_8.3.2-215-gb4af3f