eCub - a simple .epub creation tool
eCub is a cross-platform tool for creating EPUB and MobiPocket books. EPUB is become a popular e-book standard and is open and free for all to implement. EPUB files can be read by MobiPocket, Adobe Digital Editions, FBReader, Stanza, the Sony Reader, and many other readers and applications. MobiPocket books can be read on desktop platforms, mobile platforms and the Amazon Kindle e-book reader.
eCub offers a convenient way to import text and XHTML files and create all the necessary components of an EPUB file. It makes it easy to view and edit files, and check the generated EPUB, using external tools. It can also generate audio files from your book content using eSpeak and other text-to-speech software.
A wizard allows you to create a new project in seconds, with options for generating a table of contents, a cover page, and a title page. You can create a simple cover design image using templates and a simple design tool. Then you can compile, check and try out the EPUB at the click of a button.
To summarize, this is what eCub does:
- Creates unencrypted EPUB files from text or XHTML files;
- Creates MobiPocket files if you have the mobigen application;
- allows editing of the text or XHTML files with a simple internal editor or designated external editors;
- helps you create a simple cover design image;
- optionally creates title, content and cover pages;
- can be run from the command line as part of a build script;
- can be used in portable mode (data and settings are stored locally);
- can convert your book content to audio files (WAV or MP3).
eCub does not do WYSIWYG or syntax-highlighted editing, and it currently only produces unencrypted EPUB and MobiPocket output. It's likely to be useful for simple projects, such as novels, where using an expensive tool such as Adobe's InDesign is overkill.
We're providing eCub free of charge, on Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD and Solaris, for personal and commercial use. However, eCub is not an open source application.
You may like to consider the Jutoh ebook editor for easier, WYSIWYG editing, more sophisticated import, and greater configurability. Jutoh also handles footnotes, index entries and other aspects that would take a long time to perfect with eCub.
eCub is built with the cross-platform application development framework wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org ), and all dialogs were created by our own Rapid Application Development tool, DialogBlocks (http://www.dialogblocks.com).
Download eCub
eCub for Windows is about 4.8 MB in size. You need about 10 MB of disk space.
Vista/Windows 7 users: if when running eCub you see error messages about a resource load failure, please install eCub into a folder other than Program Files, or adjust permissions for the Program Files folder.
eCub for Mac OS X is about 5 MB in size. It requires OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) or later. This disk image contains universal binaries and will run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.
The archive is a disk image; downloading will automatically mount it, and you can then drag the eCub 2.xx folder
to an appropriate place, such as the Applications folder. You need about 20 MB of disk space.
eCub for Linux is about 4.25 MB in size. You need around 10 MB of disk space. The 32-bit binary is compiled on Debian Etch (4.0), and works on most Linux distributions.
Netbook users with an Asus Eee PC running Xandros, or Everex Cloudbook or Sylvania Netbook running gOS, should choose the Debian package. On Eee PCs, an icon will be installed into the Work tab. Netbook users with an Acer Aspire One running Linpus or MSI Wind/Advent Netbook running SuSE Linux should choose the RPM package.
32-bit packages:
- eCub 1.12 tarball for 32-bit Linux
- eCub 1.12 Debian package for 32-bit Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Xandros, gOS)
- eCub 1.12 RPM package for 32-bit Linux (Fedora, SuSE, Linpus)
- eCub 1.12 Gentoo Ebuild file
64-bit packages:
- eCub 1.12 tarball for 64-bit Linux
- eCub 1.12 Debian package for 64-bit Linux
- eCub 1.12 RPM package for 64-bit Linux
eCub for FreeBSD is about 4.25 MB in size.
eCub for Solaris x86 is about 4.25 MB in size.
Translation file
You can download ecub1.12.po, the latest template translation file that you can use to create a user interface translation for eCub. Please see the translation page for more information about writing a translation.
Changes
Version 1.12, July 27th 2011- In batch mode, only shows a message if the compile failed.
- Now supports TrueType files (application/truetype media type in the manifest).
- Added a Czech user interface translation, thanks to Pavel Fric.
- Added a Spanish user interface translation, thanks to Eduardo Ponce.
Version 1.11, May 30th 2010
- Added options for normal paragraph class, first paragraph class, section title class and classes that should precede a first paragraph, to allow the first paragraph to be unindended.
- Setting the document guide type to toc, title-page or cover now lets eCub order these special sections correctly when provided explicitly by the user.
- Fixed warning when adding HTML files in a non-Unicode encoding.
Version 1.10, March 2nd 2010
- Improved cover page stretching (use height since it's likely to be the greater value) and made it the default again. Also disabled multiple columns for first page (for Adobe Digital Editions).
- Added "Published by" string, now output in title page.
- Now checks if the paragraph tag is present in the current text line to avoid emitting it twice, in case text contains tags.
Version 1.09, February 11th 2010
- Corrected a bug that prevented the correct display language from being used.
- Added French display translation, courtesy of Philippe Laporte.
- CSS and image files now edited and viewed with the correct external editor as specified in preferences.
- Corrected a problem whereby spin ids didn't match manifest ids if content files were in subdirectories.
- Added Convert button to switch sections between plain text and HTML.
- Adding a content file now adds it after the selected file.
- The cover page is no longer included in the NavMap by default; added a further option to switch it back on.
- The default is now to not expand the cover image to fit the page since this rarely looks right.
- Added Working with encodings and Troubleshooting sections to the manual.
Version 1.08, December 2nd 2009
- Added "Show in NavMap" option, to allow exclusion of pages from the contents as defined in the NCX file.
- Corrected cover design border behaviour to show only two borders for double border mode, and added triple border mode which shows the background colour between the two main border colours.
- Corrected nesting bug in NavMap.
Version 1.07, October 30th 2009
- Now all source files, including images, are listed in the Files tab rather than found recursively at book compile time.
- By default, file search in the New Project Wizard is not recursive.
- The New Project Wizard remembers previous folder locations.
- In the New Project Wizard, you can now select or deselect the files to include.
- Images can be viewed in the Files window.
- Set the cover page margin to zero to remove surrounding white space.
- Added "Take title from first line of text files" to Project Options.
- Fixed bug whereby the title was not taken from the text file when added
- from the Files tab.
- Indentation in the contents page is now done with the margin-left style.
- Now looks for image and CSS files in the project folder whether or not the user has chosen to scan for HTML files.
- Added a progress dialog when generating ebooks.
- Corrected lack of conversion to relative filename when importing a chapter.
- The description field now expands to take up any extra vertical space in the "Basics" project properties tab.
- Now adds a project file to the history menu when first created.
Version 1.06, August 20th 2009
- Added a choice of text-to-speech engines: SAPI, eSpeak, and Cepstral.
- Fixed NCX content generation when working with plain text files.
- Added RTL option in project properties, although few Epub readers will honour this.
- The Calibre reader is one of the few that will.
- Fixed problems dealing with underscores in filenames.
Version 1.05, February 13th 2009
- Added audio file generation using eSpeak, with an MP3 encoding option using LAME.
- Project folder can no longer be set after creation - it's automatically updated after opening or saving, for portability.
Version 1.04, February 8th 2009
- Fixed erroneous copying of non-HTML/text files to file with HTML extension.
- Added Strings page to Preferences to allow customisation of a small number of text strings in the generated book.
- Added detailed editing to project meta-data, so multiple elements and attributes can be specified.
- Multiple element instances and their attributes are now preserved when importing an existing ebook.
- Added display language setting, currently restricted to English but further translations can be installed when they become available.
Version 1.03, February 2nd 2009
- Now copies xpgt and svg files if found in the project folder.
- Subfolders are now correctly reproduced, for example image folders.
- Corrected problem with editing and viewing files in Files tab.
- Document now marked as modified when changing "Guide type" and "Show in contents".
- Added Save and Reload buttons to Files tab.
- Added Import Method page to the New Project Wizard to add the option of importing from an existing ebook, using Calibre utilities to import non-epub books.
- Fixed compression so content.opf is always deflated (affected deployment on mobile Stanza).
Version 1.02, January 8th 2009
- Corrected initial image browser directory from documents directory to Templates.
- Added preflight checker option.
- Added first-line indent and paragraph spacing options to CSS generation, and added styles to the CSS for TOC heading, TOC entries and chapter heading.
- Fixed poor cover image quality problem on Windows.
- Document now marked as modified when changing level and ordering in Files tab.
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