On Thu, Mar 28, 2024 at 6:00 PM Julian H. Stacey wrote:

Thanks to Laura for mentioning various interesting tools. Anyone know of syntax suggestions for CLI (command line interpreters) for .groff .html .pdf to [various] .epub ?

My notes on creating pdf from html via the command line: https://www.distasis.com/cpp/books.htm I also have some information on this page about converting PDF or HTML that's been converted to PDF to a series of graphics files with imagemagick: https://www.distasis.com/recipes/portp.htm Some older hand held devices could handle graphics but not PDF formats, so I converted stories to multiple graphics files to view and read them on the device. I have some tips for using SciTE: https://www.distasis.com/cpp/scitetip.htm It's a cross-platform programming editor. It's a GUI not a command line or console tool, but it's highly customizable. So, I use a lot of command line utilities in conjunction with it and it will shell out and execute them. The information may give you some useful ideas for command line tools that work with documents. I haven't needed to use groff for anything. I use this program to view man pages. https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/blob/1b6110b73fbb123021a5a29b05d8fa9caef33235... This has some useful utilities including one to convert BSD style man pages to the more standard, older format: https://mandoc.bsd.lv/ There's a Windows port of an older version of the program for people who need Windows support at work or elsewhere: https://embedeo.org/ws/doc/man_windows/ mupdf has command line tools for pdf and ebook formats. I haven't really done much with them, but that may be your best bet on where to start for epub and pdf utilities. Some ultra-lightweight command line pdf tools: pdftxt - https://litcave.rudi.ir/ https://github.com/pts/pdfconcat Here's my list of PDF and Postscript utilities: https://lmemsm.dreamwidth.org/3702.html They're not all command line but many of them are. I have created an ebook from the command line. I did it a while ago and I never had a chance to document the steps. It involved creating some XML files to use with HTML pages and then using zip to package them. There was a specific argument I had to use with zip to get it into the proper format for an epub archive. I'd have to look at my notes. It's been too long since I was working on it. Creating an ebook from the command line once you have the HTML pages and the needed XML files can be done though and it's not a difficult process. I typically create the HTML and XML files directly in a programming editor by hand.

I would add rules to my Makefile macros to convert between various formats: http://www.berklix.org/~jhs/src/bsd/fixes/FreeBSD/src/jhs/share/mk/berklix2....

Interesting. Look forward to reading through it in more detail. By the way, this is a great topic for a discussion. I love comparing notes on the wonderful FLOSS utilities that are out there.

I made some notes on .epub a while back, http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/epub/ but so far only noticed manual driven GUI (graphical user interface tools), not seen any CLI to .epub yet.

I thought I made a list of command line and conversion tools, but I can't find it. I do mention command line tools including conversion tools on my Converting to Open Source web page, but they're mixed in with GUI tools. I remember looking for command line tools for epub several years ago. As you mentioned, most are GUI based. I found one command line epub validator program. It was licensed as Open Source but the group working on it weren't very into the whole Free Software philosophy. I probably still have the code someplace, but it's not really that useful. I could keep going about interesting FLOSS command line utilities and conversion programs, so I'll just stop now. If you ever want to discuss it further or want more ideas for interesting command line programs, feel free to email me. Best wishes. Laura