PUBLISHING

Make
The GNU Make program helps to automate workflows in which a number of
command-line programs and scripts need to be repeatedly used, for example
when converting documents. Instead of running a number of such scripts by
hand one after another, Make allows to run them in a single batch while applying
predefined rules and conditions for this process. See the related blog post on
how Make has been used in one of our projects. A Makefile can be seen as a kind
of a developer’s notebook that helps organize one’s toolbox of scripts. Make is
Open Source / Free Software.
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
Markdown
Markdown is a simple structured text format. It was originally designed to allow
writers to use informal, human-readable formatting in blog posts, using writing
conventions found in plain-text emails and chats, rather than reader-unfriendly
and writer-unfriendly HTML code. Though it originated from the blogging and
coding communities, Markdown is gaining popularity and is supported by a wide
range of tools and programs (See Mou below). This blog post compares Markdown
with HTML in the context of one of our own e-book development projects.
Most Markdown tools are Open Source / Free Software, and the format is currently
in the process of becoming an open standard.
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
mmd-meta-validation
A simple validation tool for checking metadata in a Markdown file.
https://github.com/DigitalPublishingToolkit/mmd-meta-validation
My Highlights
Our project for nai010 Publishers included two technical components. The first
is a mobile web application, called My Highlights, which allows a user to browse
a large collection and create an EPUB based on a personal selection of catalogue
texts on art works from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The
other is a set of plug-ins for the popular web content management system Word-
Press, extending the functionality of the WordPress JSON REST application programming
interface (API) (WP-AP) 1 and facilitating the generation of EPUBs directly
from a WordPress database. (The latter is for the most part a packaged version of
the CakePHP EPUB component that builds on Asbjørn Grandt’s PHPePub.)
https://github.com/DigitalPublishingToolkit/my-highlights
1 A JSON-based REST API for WordPress, https://github.com/WP-API/WP-API.
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