Announcing Project for Cross-Media Publishing

[Tobias Koch]

Hi Everybody!

Over the last four months i have been developing a
system for XML-based publishing in print and on the Web.
The markup language for writing documents is modelled
closely after HTML and the document classes correspond
roughly to the standard classes defined in LaTeX.

Documents can be converted to LaTeX or XHTML via XSL
transformations. The document processor (DP) is written in Python
and relies on libxml2 and libxslt. An integrated preprocessor
carries out tasks that cannot be accomplished with XSL,
such as

* padding special characters for tex
* conversion and resizing of graphics
* extraction of math formulas as bitmaps when generating HTML
* syntax-highlighting of programm listings

It can be easily extended through plugins.

The System is quite usable by now and i'm looking for people
interested in testing and helping out with further development.
The system is available under the terms of the GPLv2 and
can be obtained from the project website at

http://www.ecromedos.net

I'm looking forward to any feedback!

Cheers
Tobias

[Tim Arnold]

"Tobias Koch" <tk***@tojoko.de> wrote in message
news:44***********************@read.cnntp.org...

Hi Everybody!

Over the last four months i have been developing a
system for XML-based publishing in print and on the Web.
The markup language for writing documents is modelled
closely after HTML and the document classes correspond
roughly to the standard classes defined in LaTeX.

Documents can be converted to LaTeX or XHTML via XSL

Hi Toby,
great project, much needed.
Just wondering how you would compare it to tBook.

thanks,
--Tim Arnold

[Tobias Koch]

Hi Tim,

I have never used tbook. But by looking at the docu,
i'd say tbook has more features, but eCromedos is by
far easier to use. There's actually a lot of stuff
tbook does, that eCromedos doesn't, such as

* provide more output options
* MathML support and a LaTeX math parser
* overlay graphics, pstricks
* better language support
* better customizeability

but, then again, I'm not done with eCromedos, yet :-)

eCromedos is all about integration, having a simple system,
that the average john doe can deal with. In eCromedos,
everything plays together, the stylesheets, the preprocessor,
and the transformer. And there is only one silly command
you have to remember, instead of having to call dozens of
preparation scripts.

I'm aware of the fact, that it is not perfect and lags
way behind other solutions of this type. But emphasis is
on usability first and features second.

Cheers,
Tobias

Tim Arnold wrote:

Hi Toby,
great project, much needed.
Just wondering how you would compare it to tBook.

thanks,
--Tim Arnold