Bug 403297 – All documentation exportable into ePUB

• Product: Documentation
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Matija "hook" Šuklje 2012-02-12 15:57:01 UTC]

I think it would be a great addition, if all Gentoo documentation could be downloadable in ePUB.

ePUB is an open reflowing format that is based on HTML an CSS (for more see URL and Wikipedia) and supported by most ebook readers — if fact it is becoming the industry standard for electronic books and other publications.

This would make ePUB a great format for storing the official Gentoo documentation on a disk (for when you're offline), or better yet take it with you on an ebook eInk reading device. Since the docs are written in XML anyway, I hope it would not be too much of a trouble.

IMHO that would a) benefit geeks' eyes for not needing to read all that huge wonderful documentation from an LCD; and b) benefit the environment since there would be less versions printed.

[Comment 1 nm (RETIRED) 2012-02-13 22:24:19 UTC]

feel free to start such a project, but we don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to begin and maintain this kind of thing. same goes for every other PDF/ebuild/format request we get, since the documentation is a moving target. it changes far too rapidly to release and repackage version after version in a static file.

[Comment 2 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2012-02-14 12:35:30 UTC]

I don't think it'll be a huge effort once the XSLTs are written for it. All we need is to transform GuideXML into the ePub format. Iirc, there are already docbook2epub convertors that use XSLT stylesheets, so we can pick from those.

For starters, let's first see if we can't create such an XSLT, even if not officially through the site (since the most difficult part will be the translation of the handbook as it is much more dynamic).

@Matija, do you have any experience with XSLT?

[Comment 3 Matija "hook" Šuklje 2012-02-16 00:05:19 UTC]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I don't think it'll be a huge effort once the XSLTs are written for it. All we
> need is to transform GuideXML into the ePub format. Iirc, there are already
> docbook2epub convertors that use XSLT stylesheets, so we can pick from those.
> 
> For starters, let's first see if we can't create such an XSLT, even if not
> officially through the site (since the most difficult part will be the
> translation of the handbook as it is much more dynamic).

I was thinking that the situation would be something like that, yes..

> @Matija, do you have any experience with XSLT?

Well, I cca. know how an XSLT looks like, but don't have much practical experience with it. How difficult would that be? I understand that the doc team is one of the even more undermanned teams then in average, but I'm also quite busy with FS and studying these days. If no-one else will, I can slowly take it on though (I'd clearly prefer someone with more experience tackle it in far less time then it'd take me).

Should we keep this as WONTFIX?