smd_ebook: Create Kindle (etc) content from Textpattern articles

Bloke · 2012-03-19 15:22:23

If you run a publishing site in Textpattern or have simply ever wanted to publish an e-book, you may have been frustrated by the tools available. Perhaps this plugin will help. By simply uploading Amazon’s free kindlegen program to your site and installing this plugin you can create complete e-books from any series of Textpattern articles.

Features:

Organise your content into chapters if you wish and combine them into a complete book
Plugin supports:
- Cover art (Article Image of first article in book)
- Book and chapter titles from custom fields
- Author / copyright notes page
- Inline images (but see plugin docs for how to do it properly)
- Author (by default from first article’s Textpattern Author, or custom field)
- Book description and publisher from custom field
- Price from custom field
- Automatic Table of Contents (ToC) generation
- Custom stylesheet inclusion
Adjust any generated meta files manually if you wish, before final book generation
Preview book chapters / Table of contents from the admin side
Download complete book to your computer for dragging to your e-reader
Copy the complete book into your Textpattern Files tab with one click so you can offer it as a direct download

With some cunning you can integrate this into your yab_shop / smd_ipn / smd_access_keys workflow so people can order the book from your shop and receive a secure download link.

Even if you don’t run a professional publishing outfit, you can use the plugin as a handy shortcut for you and your other Textpattern author accounts to create e-book content. Doing it manually is a labour-intensive drag (I should know: I’ve been doing it the past month while creating this plugin!) and documentation is scarce. So you could use this plugin to just copy and paste your Micro$oft Word masterpiece into one or more articles, muck about with Textile a bit if you like (I’ve not tried it with hak_tinymce… anyone care to test?), and hit ‘Create’.

I’ve been giving the plugin a serious grilling the past few weeks and I’m happy it’s working solidly. But because of the nature of working with third party tools and the fact there are so many ways you could set it up, I’m going to offer it as a limited Beta for now. When I get some field reports in or you find things that could be improved, I’ll factor them into the code and work towards an official release.

One thing to note right now is that editing the e-book files on Txp 4.4.1 is awkward because the XML that Textpattern spits out is not encoded properly, thus the textarea doesn’t have line breaks in it. This has been corrected in Txp 4.5.0 so if you’re running SVN it’ll look great. Note also that there are two versions you can download, because the way AJAX plugins such as this work is changing in the next release. Please make sure you download the correct version for your Textpattern or you’ll (a) not see the plugin at all, (b) find it doesn’t work.

With all that said, please go and grab a copy, check the Setup instructions first and report back on the success or otherwise of the plugin.

Textpattern’s roots lie in publishing: happy e-booking.

colak · 2012-03-19 16:41:18

Wonderful!
Mental note: ask for a migration of the site to latest specs server.

jameslomax · 2015-06-22 17:49:27

Anyone tested this and using it?

Last edited by jameslomax (2015-06-22 17:50:08)

Bloke · 2015-06-22 18:43:09

jameslomax wrote #291834:

Anyone tested this and using it?

Me! An ebook generated by this plugin has been delivering sales on a Txp site I made for over three years. Sadly not my book or I’d be typing this from a sun lounger in the Bahamas.

gaekwad · 2015-06-22 18:50:15

Bloke wrote #291835:

Sadly not my book or I’d be typing this from a sun lounger in the Bahamas.

We should talk about the current state of electronic publishing when we’re in Brizzle, sir.

candyman · 2015-06-22 20:01:58

Unbelievable: never heard about smd_ebook.
I wonder how many other txp plugins are out there that I ignore the existance.
Stef, can you provide the url of the site that already use your plugin?

Last edited by candyman (2015-06-22 20:04:16)

Bloke · 2015-06-22 20:37:50

gaekwad wrote #291836:

We should talk about the current state of electronic publishing when we’re in Brizzle, sir.

Sounds like a plan to me. I’m astounded at how bad the formatting is on ebooks, even on so-called professional publications. That’s why I wrote the plugin because you can control every aspect of the publication using Textile markup/CSS and create the virtual book (with preview) on your Txp site. When it’s ready to go, you just hit the button and it spits out the finished thing, which should look and behave as close as possible to how it’s designed in Txp. Almost a match made in heaven.

I did begin integrating it with MLP so another Txp author could use a book designed in a Txp site to translate and publish in different languages, sharing images and resources where appropriate. Never got round to finishing it, and there are going to be better ways to publish multi-lingually in Txp than with MLP if I have my way.

candyman wrote #291837:

can you provide the url of the site that already use your plugin?

I hesitate to do so because it’s old, the templates haven’t been updated in years, it’s barely responsive and is kind of embarrassing, but the lady who wrote the book is lovely. So, well, why not. LaidBackDogs.com and the one page site for the book

Bloke · 2015-06-22 20:47:32

Actually, v0.20 is rotting on my dev site so if anyone’s interested, don’t bother with the link above, get in touch and I’ll send you this version instead, which supports ePub as well as Kindle, and is (a bit) nicer to look at under Txp 4.5.x.

hcgtv · 2015-06-22 21:53:35

candyman wrote #291837:

I wonder how many other txp plugins are out there that I ignore the existance.

Quite a lot I would think, plugins have no central directory. Let’s say a developer creates a plugin, they don’t have to put it up on the textpattern.org site, they may want to drive traffic to their site, or hold control because they want to charge for it one day. What needs to be done, is to create a central database of all the plugins known to us, with links to their location. This database, needs to be kept up to date by someone, by following the forums to find new arrivals and such. Also what often happens is that a site goes dark, all plugins are lost, so if the plugins only reside on someone’s site and not the textpattern.org site, it would be good practice to download the plugin and keep them archived for such an occasion.

Bloke wrote #291838:

So, well, why not. LaidBackDogs.com and the one page site for the book

A bouncy response doesn’t mean the dog enjoys human touch, it is usually a coping strategy where the dog is indicating that, actually, he is worried by the human. – from sample chapter downloaded using smd_ebook.

Damn, my dog is worried about me.

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#1 2012-03-19 15:22:23