COAP:COAP-2180/week6
Week 6 COAP 2180
Week six includes four-five topics:
- Discussion of the exam (grades will be available on Wednesday)
- Discussion of the term project including informal short presentations of each student's intention and last reusable homework.
- XML namespaces. You will learn how to integrate your XML with XHTML and the other way round
- Discussion of the ePUB format: Use of Calibre, a ePUB generating software (Wednesday)
- Short presentation of other compound formats (if time left)
Teaching materials
- XML namespaces
- ePub (overview page for the popular e-book format, optional reading)
- Calibre (calibre help)
Textbook chapters
- Harold, XML in a Nutshell, Chapter 4 Namespaces (more informative)
- Learning XML, Chapter "Markup and Core Concept". Namespace are shortly explained in the Elements Section
Discussion of the mid-term
(Monday)
Discussion of the term project / DTD refinement
On Monday, the instructor will discuss with each students if modifications ought to be made to DTDs made for prior homework.
The term project will include:
- A DTD that models a "domain of your choice". This domain should be somewhat text-centric, i.e. one must be able to display the data in a meaningful way with an XSLT stylesheet.
- An extensive XML test file
- Rendering in HTML via XSLT + CSS, therefore an .xsl and a .css file for the resulting HTML
- An XML Schema (week 7) that adds some data constraints
- A report/documentation in HTML, PDF or Word format (at least 1/2 page, but more if you aim for a top grade)
Other constraints
- All elements can be revisions of prior homework
- Prior to turning in the project, the instructor must validate a draft DTD if the project is different from one of the prior homework. This is to prevent both failure and cheating...
Due: Presentation on Monday week 8
Homework 6
Task
(1) Create an e-book in ePub format
- We suggest to use the Calibre converting tool (or similar), but you also can "handcraft" the e-pub file or use an authoring tool like Sigil i.e. write a text from start (including some copy/paste).
- You can take contents that you didn't create yourself, but this case:
- your name must appear in the e-book, e.g. as the creator of e-book version
- You should at least write a short foreword for this edition (1-2 sentences is enough)
(2) If you aim for a high grade, turn in an optional report that describes the intended audience of the e-book, its making (shortly) and other useful comments you may have.
Tips
Calibre's help should include enough information to get you started. Before picking up one tutorial, please have a look at the The official "Grand Tour Video"
Finally, EduTechWiki also includes a E-book conversion with Calibre article, however the only useful information so far concerns cleaning up HTML
If you use other tools, you are on your own for finding help and other useful information. If you want to start from scratch, Sigil is supposed to be a fairly easy to learn/use tool. It's basically a specialized HTML editor that will package files, images and meta-information into an epub file.
Due:
- Before start of class, Monday week 7