Comments on: How to create my own books for Classics.app?

Question: How to create my own books for Classics.app?

tksh — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:45:41 -0800

How would I automate converting Project Gutenberg books into ebooks for Classics.app on the iPhone?

Or more specifically, I have recently finished reading some classics on the wonderful Classics program for the iPhone/iTouch and I want to start adding my own favourites for on-the-go reading.

I've figured out that each book in Classics is just a collection of PDF files, one for each chapter, and a simple XML file that acts as a chapters index. The PDF page have a specific size and I have a Pages template and some defined styles that have the right margin, page size, font size, styling and all.

I've done a simple book with a few chapters as a test and they showed up great but it was incredibly tedious. Basically, for each chapter:

Create a new blank document in Pages and apply the saved page size settings

Copy and paste the chapter text into the document

Apply a title style to the chapter heading and a paragraph style to everything else

Run a quick find-and-replace to convert straight quotes into smart quotes

Save file with relevant meta info (in case I need to manually touch-up)

Finally, print as PDF with relevant meta info

Is there any way to automate all this? I'm OK with scripting and am willing to learn Latex if that is the way but I'd rather use Applescript and use the Pages engine to format, hyphenate and style everything.

By: eccnineten

eccnineten — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:24:41 -0800

The free iphone ap Stanza will do some of this for you.

By: Happy Dave

Happy Dave — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:12:00 -0800

Yeah, Stanza is linked in to both Gutenberg and Feedbooks, and it can work with most commercial and free eBook formats. Lovely app.

By: BaxterG4

BaxterG4 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:45:16 -0800

Sorry to derail, but how are you getting your test book to be displayed by Classics? Only thing I can think of is via jailbreak then add these to the app bundle, but I thought that would invalidate the code signing and make the iPhone not open the app.

By: tksh

tksh — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:57:54 -0800

I have used Stanza before but I found the UI to neither as slick nor as comfortable as Classics. I prefer Classics' rendering, chapter and bookmark support. Though Stanza is easier to transfer my own books of course.

BaxterG4 Yes I had to play around with jailbreaking and a patched mobileinstallation to get around the code signing. Not for the faint of heart.