Comments on: Three useful XML schemas in publishing

By: Liza Daly

Liza Daly — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:22:05 +0000

Adrienne: You should have no problem with ePub given your background. Good luck!

By: Adrienne Adams

Adrienne Adams — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:37:10 +0000

I have just discovered your blog at the end of a full day of researching ebook publishing. I’m a web designer/frontend developer, and am keenly interested in interoperable publishing formats; delighted, as well, to see that some of my expertise with XHTML and CSS can be applied to e-publishing. I look forward to keeping up with your posts and learning more about this subject.

By: stuart yeates

stuart yeates — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:52:41 +0000

The tool that I wrote for converting our TEI works to ePub (via our website) is at http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Cocoon_epub_Compiler If anyone is seriously interested in using it, poke me and I’ll update it to the latest and greatest version that we’re using in live.

By: keith

keith — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:42:12 +0000

It may turn out that the XML way of writing HTML5 allows publishers to get a little bit more semantics than they currently get from XHTML 1.0 without sacrificing broad ubiquity.

By: liza

liza — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:22:11 +0000

John: Sure, but there’s no “built-in” way to do that. Of course it’s totally possible to use class attributes that way, but without a constrained vocabulary, different content producers will do it differently. That’s only bad insofar as it prevents easy interchange.

By: John Maxwell

John Maxwell — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:19:43 +0000

Of XHTML’s lack of “semantically meaningful elements,” wouldn’t you agree that the “class” attribute—which is typically used to provide stylesheet hooks—can be usefully employed to denote semantic structures? Any reason why we really shouldn’t be doing that?

By: Kaveh Bazargan

Kaveh Bazargan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:38:44 +0000

Just a quick comment to say how useful these snippets of information are, at least to one person. ;-) I keenly await future posts…

By: Brad Scott

Brad Scott — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:17:03 +0000

I've used all three in my time, but do have a soft spot for TEI, which I have used when designing data for a number of publishers, including the MLA Handbook, Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, and the Statesman's Yearbook. It's very flexible and certainly makes it easier to get results more quickly than trying to reinvent the wheel. Funnily enough I'd only just read the post on the History Compass blog about the Holinshed site, also using TEI and in particular the Comparator.