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Name: ePUB Output for Pier Books
Level: Intermediate
Possible mentor: Nick Ager
Possible second mentor: Lukas Rengli

Description

Pier [1,2]�is�an�extensible�object-oriented content management system�that includes a book authoring engine. The book authoring engine has been used to document a number of Smalltalk based projects, most notable Seaside [3] as well as Moose [4]�and Pharo [5].

The goal of this project is add ePUB [6] as an output format to Pier enabling existing and future Pier books and other Pier content to be output in a format readable by popular eReaders.�

[1]�http://www.piercms.com/

[2]�http://code.google.com/p/pier/

[3]�http://book.seaside.st/

[4]�http://www.themoosebook.org/

[5]�http://book.pharo-project.org/

[6]�http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

Technical Details

Content in Pier is parsed into a document tree that supports the visitor pattern [7] for traversing the internal representation. Pier currently supports a number of output formats such as HTML, plain text, RSS, wiki text. These formats are generated by visitors. The existing visitors would act as a template for creation of an ePUB visitor which would generate ePUB compatible output.

�

[7]�http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_pattern

Benefits to the Student

The project is well defined with a clear deliverable. The student will gain an understanding of the internals of a powerful, well structured content management system as well as the satisfaction of having a set of artefacts in the format of the existing Pier book content translated into ePUB format.�

Benefits to the Community

The Smalltalk community and others using the Pier book authoring engine will gain ePUB as an output format. With an ebook output format authors have a potential new revenue source, encouraging a virtuous cycle of increasing documentation within and outside the community.