Essentials of Paleomagnetism — JupyterBook Edition

A modern, interactive web version of Essentials of Paleomagnetism, built with Jupyter Book v2.

Attribution

This work is being adapted, revised, and updated from:

Tauxe, L. Essentials of Paleomagnetism, 5th web edition. with contributions from: Subir K. Banerjee, Robert F. Butler and Rob van der Voo

That version is available online at EarthRef.org with the source files to be found here: https://github.com/ltauxe/Essentials-of-Paleomagnetism

Setup

Prerequisites

• Mamba (via Miniforge or Mambaforge)
• The original LaTeX source repo at ../Essentials-of-Paleomagnetism/ (for figure conversion)

Create the environment

mamba env create -f environment.yml
mamba activate ess-jbook

Or use the Makefile:

make install
mamba activate ess-jbook

Building the Book

Local development server (recommended)

mamba activate ess-jbook && cd book && jupyter book start --execute

This launches a live-reloading dev server with notebook execution — edits to .md and .ipynb files are reflected immediately. The server URL will be displayed in the terminal output (typically http://localhost:3000 or another available port).

Static build

make build

The built site is in book/_build/site/. Serve it with:

make serve

Then visit http://localhost:8000 (the make serve target uses a fixed port).

Clean build artifacts

make clean

Converting Figures

Chapter figures are converted from EPS (original LaTeX source) to PNG:

# Convert a specific chapter's figures
python scripts/convert_figures.py --chapter 4
python scripts/convert_figures.py --chapter 5

# Convert all EPS files
python scripts/convert_figures.py --all

# Convert specific files
python scripts/convert_figures.py --files fig1.eps fig2.eps

Requires ghostscript (mamba install ghostscript or brew install ghostscript).

Project Structure

Essentials-JupyterBook/
├── book/                    # Main book content
│   ├── myst.yml             # JupyterBook v2 configuration & TOC
│   ├── index.md             # Landing page
│   ├── references.bib       # Bibliography
│   ├── chapters/            # Chapter content (MyST Markdown / notebooks)
│   │   └── chapter4.md
│   ├── figures/             # Converted figures (PNG)
│   └── _static/             # Custom CSS, logos
├── scripts/                 # Utility scripts
│   └── convert_figures.py   # EPS to PNG converter
├── environment.yml          # Mamba environment specification
├── Makefile                 # Build commands
└── .github/workflows/       # CI/CD (GitHub Pages deployment)

License

Content: CC-BY-4.0