hb-epub3

A Harp boilerplate for generating EPUB3 ebooks.

Get started

1. Install Harp

This boilerplate is for Harp, the static web server with built-in preprocessing. Harp can flatten the preprocessed code—in this case, Jade, Stylus and Markdown—to HTML & CSS. Then, it can easily be turned into a .epub file.

Install Harp globally:

sudo npm install harp -g

2. Clone this boilerplate

Next, clone this boilerplate.

git clone https://github.com/kennethormandy/hb-epub3 ebook
cd ebook

3. Compile your .epub using Harp

Then, using the OS’ zip command, the generated folder can be compressed into a valid .epub file.

harp compile . ebook; cd ebook; zip -X0 \../ebook.epub mimetype; zip -rDX9 \../ebook.epub * -x "*.DS_Store" -x mimetype; cd \../

Now, if you want to make some quick changes and just view them in the browser, you can serve a locally:

harp server
# The content is now visible at http://harp.nu:9000/OPS/book/content

Todo

• Properly support everything listed in harp.json
• Further improve typographic defaults
• Automatically use any Markdown in _content/
• Restore text sizing in iBooks
• Run against accessibility checklist

Works Cited

• Candide by Voltaire, via Project Gutenberg
• reitermarkus/epub3-boilerplate
• javierarce/epub-boilerplate
• Saolee/epub-boilerplate
• mattharrison/epub-css-starter-kit