Inasmuch as there’s not, yet, an EPUB reader for Emacs, you can still set up Emacs to be able to open .epub files to see what’s inside them, since they are, after all, just ZIP files:
(setq auto-mode-alist
(append
(list
'("\\.epub$" . archive-mode))
auto-mode-alist))
(setq auto-coding-alist
(append
(list
'("\\.epub$" . no-conversion))
auto-coding-alist))
Inasmuch as my computer had been flaky since the motherboard, the graphics card, and the OS were replaced in one go last year (and if I now replace the case and the disks, will it be my grandfather’s computer?) and as I had some time where there were no urgent deliverables and no conferences, I decided to replace the OS with a different version of Linux. Since the computer would lock up with either the Xorg process or interrupts taking 100% of a core and nothing else able to run, I was looking for it to be a problem with the OS (free) rather than the hardware (not).
Three days, six-or-so Linux distributions, and many installs later, I’m back on the original OS but with a different X driver. So far it’s been stable, but there had previously been times when it was stable for days on end between the times when it would crash with extreme rapidity. Continue reading
Inasmuch as the EPUB: Chapter and Verse talk went down well and, for many people, the Saturday evening libations at The Strahov Monastic Brevery went down even better, I judge XML Prague 2011 to be a success for me (and for my co-author, Mark Howe) and for Mentea and also a success in its own right.
Several people made approving comments about the talk, which was good (some even commented on last year’s talk, which, since this showed they still remembered it, was even better). The best comment about this year’s though is probably @Innovimax‘s tweet:
Tony is a real 21th century XML Monk! He sponsored the Beer Station at #xmlprague and works on nicely printing bibles. #consideringJoining
Inasmuch as XML Prague was where it became obvious that “Menteith” wasn’t working for many people, Mentea is pleased to be sponsoring the evening libations at XML Prague 2011 to promote the new name.
Inasmuch as Mentea does now have a page on Facebook, it’s not the easiest to remember – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mentea/184399461597762 – because Mentea has no username until it is more “liked”.
Inasmuch as Mentea is now on Twitter as @MenteaXML, see http://twitter.com/MenteaXML.
Inasmuch as it’s now decided, after much deliberation and some seeking of the wisdom of a small crowd, here’s the new Mentea logo shown against light and dark backgrounds:
Inasmuch as XML Prague is the best XML conference in Europe that I know of, I am pleased to be again co-presenting with Mark Howe of Cyberporte at XML Prague 2011 on 26-27 March. Our talk this year is EPUB: Chapter and Verse:
The link between the Bible and publishing technology is at least as old as Gutenberg’s press. 400 years after the publication of the King James Bible, we were asked to convert five modern French Bible translations from a widely-used ad hoc TROFF-like markup scheme used to produce printed Bibles to a standard XML vocabulary, and then to EPUB. We opted to use XSLT 2.0 and ant to perform all stages of the conversion process. Along the way we discovered previously unimagined creativity in the original markup, even within a single translation. We cursed the medieval scholars and the modern editors who have colluded to produce several mutually incompatible document hierarchies. We struggled to map various typesetting features to EPUB. E-Reader compatibility made us nostalgic for browser wars of the 90s. The result is osisbyxsl, a soon-to-be open source solution for Bible EPUB origination.
Inasmuch as there’s often a lot of litter on the beach either dropped (or, worse, deliberately dumped) by people or washed up by the waves, you can often fill several bags as part of a Skerries Adopt-A-Beach cleanup, but even as you take the bags to the pick-up point you’ll see some more litter and, just like Colombo, you find yourself saying “Just one more thing…” as you nab another villain.
Inasmuch as many people have trouble pronouncing “Menteith”, Menteith Consulting Ltd will begin trading under the name “Mentea”. The new logo and website aren’t ready yet, but the beginning of the year is the suitable time to make at least a low-key announcement.
“Mentea” was the most popular choice in a poll of alternative new names among some clients and contacts. Continue reading