EPUB Preview Factory

A library that generates EPUB previews from full publications.

The output is based on the upcoming specification dedicated to previews published by the IDPF.

Created by Feedbooks with the support of Centre National du Livre.

Released under the MIT license.

Requirements

Ruby 1.9 or a more recent version.

Install bundler with gem.

In the directory run "bundle install".

Required Ruby gems:

• zipruby
• nokogiri
• mime-types
• uuid
• thor
• workers

EPUB Preview Factory is based on a fork of Peregrin to handle the EPUB side of things.

Using EPUB Preview Factory

You can list all the available options for EPUB Preview Factory using the command-line:

$ bundle exec ruby main.rb

Usage:
 main.rb extract -d, --destination=DESTINATION -s, --source=SOURCE

Options:
 -s, --source=SOURCE                          # Source file or directory
 -d, --destination=DESTINATION                # destination file or directory 
 -i, [--identifier=IDENTIFIER]                # force preview identifier
 -p, [--percent=PERCENT]                      # change percent, default 5%
 -w, [--pool-size=POOL_SIZE]                  # change pool size for directory mode, default 5
 -v, [--verbose=VERBOSE]                      # verbose mode
 -c, [--max-char=MAX_CHAR]                    # calcul the size of the extract by char count instead of percent
 -m, [--move-finish-files=MOVE_FINISH_FILES]  # move finished file to the following directory

EPUB Preview Factory has two main modes: single file or batch.

In single file mode (-s pointing to an EPUB), you just need to specify two options: the source file and the destination file. The default option for a preview is to include 5% of the total publication.

$ bundle exec ruby main.rb extract -s test.epub -d test_preview.epub

In batch mode (-s pointing to a directory), you can specify the number of workers (default option is 5 workers) that you'd like to use to process books faster using the -w option.

Upcoming features

• Detect FXL EPUB and use a page mode for them
• Add specific support for navigation documents in EPUB 3
• Detect cover pages, introduction, toc etc. and exclude them from count
• Better support for relative URLs for links that are modified in HTML
• Support for EPUB 3.0.1 collections and the preview role

History

• 0.1
  • Initial release
  • Generate preview based on % of the book or total number of characters
  • Use metadata recommendations from the AHL spec (different identifier, link back to original identifier with dc:source, dc:type set to preview)
  • Updates the container, OPF and NCX to only include the content documents that we need
  • Detect images used in content files of the preview and remove other images