1. What you'll learn in this document1.2. What you'll learn (4/10)2. Creating an ebook specification

1.2. What you'll learn

Creating an ebook out of a set of HTML pages involves the following steps:

  1. Creating an ebook specification.

    This XML file, generally having a ".ebook" extension, contains the structure of your book. A sample ebook specification is found in XXE_install_dir/demo/ebook-sample.ebook.

  2. Creating the ebook pages which are referenced by your ebook specification.

    An ebook page simply contains valid XHTML, preferably valid XHTML5 as ebookc anyway generates XHTML5 markup.

    In addition to HTML, an ebook page may also be written in Markdown. More information in Markdown support.

    See also Appendix A. Configuring the Markdown parser.

  3. Creating a CSS stylesheet which will make your ebook look good.

    Note that this CSS stylesheet also applies to output formats like PDF or DOCX which, unlike EPUB and Web Help, are not based on XHTML and CSS.

  4. Optionally creating one or more conditional processing profiles.

    This step is often needed when the content of the ebook depends on the target format. For example, some ebook pages may contain interactive content (e.g. a feedback form) and this interactive content simply cannot be rendered in PDF or DOCX.

  5. Converting your ebook specification to a number of output formats: EPUB, Web Help, PDF, RTF, WML, DOCX (MS-Word) and ODT (OpenOffice/LibreOffice).