GnuCash Documentation 2.4.1 in .epub and .mobi format

SASAKI Suguru sss.sonik at gmail.com
Sat Jul 9 05:07:27 EDT 2011


Hi,

2011-07-09 Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be>:
>> I guess, Python is almost a standard tool on Linux and other enverionments,
>> so depending on Python is not bad.
>
> It's not a standard tool on Windows unfortunately.
> Our Windows build currently doesn't use python and the debate is still open
> whether it should or not. I'll skip the discussion about it for now,
> that's not the point I want to make here.
> But I think we can agree that Windows is our most limiting platform here.

Oh, exactly.  Not a standard on Windows.

So, we *should* assume we sould be able to build the docs
on all supported platforms, including Windows, right?


> For me, I would like to see the epub format supported by default.
> Given our little investigation, we can assume that this is possible with the tools
> already available both on Windows and the other platforms (shell script,
> xlstproc and zip). So supporting epub is a no brainer as it doesn't introduce
> new dependencies.

Right. According to out current investigation, we can do that.


> Having said all that, I'm still for adding mobi support to our build scripts.
> So here's what I propose:
> We can make it an optional format via our configure script. At present we have
> a simple configure script that checks for the necessary dependencies and
> generates the proper makefiles from there. There's no conditional in there
> until now, but it can easily be added. Suppose we introduce a --with-mobi
> conditional. When someone runs ./configure --with-mobi:
> - configure will test for python and calibre and issue an error if either one
> is missing
> - setup the proper build rules to convert an epub document to a mobi document
>
> With that, I think we have the best of both worlds. epub freely available, and
> mobi for those who want to build it themselves. And yet the Windows build
> doesn't get any more dependencies.
>
> Does that sound ok to you ?

It's surely OK.
That's true that if one needs .mobi format one,
maybe she has some conversion tools on her own.


So, here's the summary:

- Support EPUB by default
  - We should go without dbtoepub (and Ruby) itself,
    and create EPUB with current toolchains.
- Support MOBI by optional
  - We will introduce --with-mobi (--without-mobi by default) to
configure script.
    This will test Python and Calibre are available, and if not, issue an error.

Is this OK?

-- 
SASAKI Suguru
  mailto:sss.sonik at gmail.com


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