Workshop: "You Want to Go XML-First: Now What? Building an In-House XML-First Workflow" by Terri Rothman & Sylvia Hunter (P-Shift, University of Toronto Press) for ebookcraft 2016, presented by BookNet Canada and eBOUND Canada - March 30, 2016
4. Demystify XML
Share our UTP story
Navigate our workflow
Decode XSLTs
Open our toolbox
Predict the future
5. eXtensible Markup Language
– you can do whatever you want with it
Platform-independent
– no special software needed
Transformable
– you can make your XML into
anything you want
6. DTD – Document Type Definition
XSLT – eXtensible Stylesheet
Language Transformation
7.
8. A press since 1901
In its 6th year of using an in-house
XML-First workflow
Managed by the P-Shift team
Full implementation was gradually done
over multiple years
9. You want to future-proof your content
◦ So you archive it in XML for the potential
down the road
You want to have more control over your
content
◦ So you apply XML tags to identify what
things are
10. To keep things familiar
Maintain control over content
Allow in-house EPUB production
Be the creators of an archive format
11. Screen or
Paper CE
Non-
Standardized
CE Mark-Up
Comp in
InDesign
from Word
files
Hard-copy
Proof
PDF to
Printer
Post-
publication
Batch
Conversion
PDF to EPUB
32. Data folder Lib folder
This folder
has got a
lot of stuff
in it.
Under the hood
7 Pipelines
61 XSLT Stylesheets
643 XSLT Templates
= a bajillion XSLT Commands
34. <!-- prep sects for file splitting in Sigil –->
<xsl:template name="mark-chapter-break">
<xsl:if test="exists(following::div
[@class=('frontmatter','chapter','backmatter')])">
<hr class="sigil_split_marker" />
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
35.
36.
37.
38. Makes applying styles quicker and easier
Checks Harvard- or Vancouver-style
reference citations
Citation algorithms create linking
relationships
Exports nice, clean XML based on our DTD
41. Can edit XML and EPUB files
Run XSL transform processes to turn one
type of XML into another
Can make global changes using RegEx
Can validate against DTDs
42.
43.
44.
45. PROS
Free
Easy to use
WYSIWYG
Validation built-in: FlightCrew
CONS
Not so good at EPUB3 (yet)
Adds extra code and cleans things
46. EPUBCheck and EPUB Validator
Provide validation information, specifying the
file/chapter and line in the code
47. Using more than one method of validation
ensures that errors missed in one venue are
caught in the other
48. PROS
Free
Provides itemized list of errors
Finds errors that Sigil or FlightCrew may miss
CONS
Online version limited to 10MB files
Command-line version can be clunky
54. Where Automation Makes Sense
To free us up for the things
that are worth our manual time
55.
56.
57. XML: Control and access your content by imposing
consistent semantic markup and structure
DTD: Validate and describe the structure of your
document (your content)
XSLT: Read, manipulate, and transform, your
content
SCHEMATRON: Evaluate, report on,
and QA your content!
58. To safeguard and correct content
[Source: http://shudson310.blogspot.ca/2015/05/schema-tron.html]
59. A way to “test” your content
• Does the order of chapters in the TOC match the
order laid out in the main body?
A way to receive a “report” on your content
• Find all page ranges where the first page is a higher
number than the last page in the range