eBooks
Well, I’ve been at work and have the rudiments of an interface built. All it has at present is an html editor that I can find text in and that does syntax highlighting, something I’m so used to I can’t do without it.
On the other hand I’ve created a bunch of classes and can create the bare bones of an epub book and zip it up. (An epub file is really just a zip file. You can change the extension to zip and open it in Windows Explorer, not as a book, but as the contents.) My program creates the META-INF folder and the container.xml file that goes in it. It also creates the OEBPS (Open Ebook Publication Structure) folder and some of its contents. The stylesheet.css file that the book will use, ditto the page-template.xpgt file, and the rudiments of the content.opf (Open Packaging Format) file. This xml file contains a manifest that list the names and locations of all the files in the book including any images, a spine that lists the id’s for the toc.NCX, the Global Navigation Structure, (tells the reader device the display order of the files,) and a guide that lists the items in the little drop down menu at the top of your reader which lists such things as the Table of Contents, Cover Page, Start Page, etc. The toc.NCX and the toc.xml remain to be done (toc = table of contents,) but they’re not difficult.
I haven’t done anything about opening a book for editing, but once I’m able to build one most of what’s needed for that will be in place.
