dotBook
The parent project is: dolphin.sourceforge.net.
The dotBook application will be a book reader that can
download, display and cache books in a special JAR file format.
The format will allow digital signatures
with PGP and allow books to have chapters and paragraphs that can be found
conveniently from within the application but will link sources outside books
by opening the default web browser. Book pages will be HTML pages with
some restrictions.
Design Goals
The goal is to have an XML descriptor format to be stored outside the book (JAR file) and
an XML content format to be stored inside the JAR file. A compound format that
allows to combine descriptor, JAR file and signatures in a single file is being
considered. Reading the descriptor should be very easy and not require to read
the JAR file, so the JAR file will possibly be compressed and appended to the
uncompressed descriptor.
The book layout will honor CSS PrintLayouts.
The XML content will allow for imprints following an independent specification for
XML imprints, factored out from the esp.nongnu.org project.
The dotBook editor will allow to edit a limited subset
of the MediaWiki syntax
and a subset of HTML.
The format is intended to be useful on e-Paper devices that
can hibernate between turning pages. A sequential page order will be
encouraged, while still allowing to set anchors and links inside pages.
Animated content will be discouraged: It will probably only be animated on
user request. That means all animated images will be replaced by empty boxes
with the text "Animation <n>: [play]" inside, if no still image is provided
to take the place.
Download
Version
0.3.5
WebStart
This requires Mozilla 1.7.8+ (GTK2) on Linux-x86,
support for Windows is unverified, other systems are unsupported.
Webstart apparently needs two program starts to recognize a new program
release.
- Launch version 0.3.5 with Java WebStart:
- -> bookreader.jnlp
On Linux the SWT
Browser requires MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME to be set and
LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME.
If the book reader is webstarted from Mozilla the correct settings
are inherited, otherwise the environment of the javaws process
has to be modified to contain them (e.g. by editing .cshrc or .bashrc).
Releases
- 0.2.2: New command line options, e.g.: -k <keyword>[,<keyword2>] opens the first book found with all keywords in its title.
- 0.2.2b: bugfix to 0.2.2 (Index menu didn't work as expected)
- 0.3.1: support for references to local and remote bookshelves. To export a bookshelf per WWW the .bookshelf file must be manually edited to contain the 'export_url' property.
- 0.3.2: can check for new revisions of a book and replace the archive. The
timestamps in the RSS file are now actual publishing dates or, at least, the
modification dates as reported by the source web server.
- 0.3.3: import remote books from original source if remote bookshelf is not
readable and bugfix to 0.3.2.
- 0.3.4: progress indicator for downloads. Books with non-standard index
pages can now be read by manually adding the property 'index_page' to the
.book file (e.g. Thinking in Java)
- 0.3.5: improvements to bookshelf import and update.
Bookshelves
Ideas
Related projects
http://blackboard.nongnu.org/
credits
Author: Bernhard Fastenrath
