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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT SDF.ORG>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] epub unpacked
  • Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 00:52:41 +0000 (UTC)

I tried to compile a linux epub reader (it needs GTK 2.4 or later) then read in Wikipedia that epub files are zipped xml files.

Having had such good luck with odt format, I tried unzip on epub.

unzip file.epub produces a directory with 6 htm files (chapters of a
Gutenberg novel) and a few .css files and one cover.jpg. Six htm files add to the same size as the single-file htm or text version.

Viewed with Firefox ePub reader (Firefox 3 or later) it displays as two side by side pages. Mouse is needed to 'turn pages'.

The htm files display with lynx faster, space bar to next page.
The text file is similar but is not the full page width (I am using framebuffer text at 1024 and the text is 80 columns).

If I first load the right console Cyrillic font, I can read a Bulgarian novel downloaded from Gutenberg in console mode (text or htm with lynx set to the same font).

Links2 -g can read the html version (with svgalib in console mode on CRT monitor, or in X with no added fonts - Cyrillic comes with links2).

Epub format is read by iPad iPhone (iBook) Bookeen Bookworm and there are free epub books online at sites besides Gutenberg.

plucker format does NOT unzip. The format compresses images for handheld viewers. Probably so does kindle (mobipocket) format for handhelds but kindle can also just read text and html. Since basiclinux is not intended to use on smartphones or pdas I won't bother with these.



Sindi Keesan



  • [BL] epub unpacked, sindi keesan, 11/30/2011

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