Re: Publishing a Book as PDF and ePub.

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2015-11-02, at 16:37, Ian Barton <lists@wilkesley.net> wrote:

> Next year our mountaineering club has its 50th anniversary. On the
> 21st anniversary we published a book of articles written by members of
> the club. Luckily the text was written in WordPerfect and I have
> converted it to a series of org-mode files, one per chapter. For the
> upcoming 50th anniversary we want to make the book available in both
> pdf and ePub or mobi format.
>
> Creating ePub doesn't look too hard by exporting to html and using
> something like Calibre to make the ePub/mobi file. However, as a Latex
> neophyte I was wondering which of the several Latex packages would be
> suitable. The structure of the book is very simple. No tables or
> formulae but has some photos and cartoons, which I have scanned from
> the originals.
>
> All I need is something that will let me format chapter headings,
> author attributions and produce a TOC. Templates like Memoir seem to
> be vast overkill for my needs and have documentation several times
> longer than our book!

I agree that memoir might not be the best idea.  (I had bad experience
with it, probably mainly due to its monolithic design.)

One way would be the koma-script packages.  (I never used them, but many
people are satisfied with them.)

Also, the TeX showcase (https://www.tug.org/texshowcase/) might give you
some inspiration.

And if you are brave enough, you might want to look at ConTeXt:
http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page .  It is an alternative (i.e.,
not LaTeX-related), TeX-based typesetting engine.  IMHO it is more
advanced (at least typographically) and /much/ better designed than
LaTeX.  It seems there is no ConTeXt exporter for Org-mode (however,
this should not be difficult to fix).  One of he advantages of ConTeXt
is that it supposedly can produce an Epub ebook (though this never
worked for me - OTOH, I tried it some three years ago, and I would guess
the progress might be substantial).  Another is an active and helpful
(albeit small compared to LaTeX's) community.

Also, if/when you have /specific/ questions on how to achieve something
in LaTeX, http://tex.stackexchange.com/ is a good place to ask
questions.  (It is much friendlier and relaxed than SO, btw.)

Hth

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University