Major Website Update

samisdat

Hello Stranger!

Key Changes

  1. This website is now running on Grav 2.0 which was released a few months ago, after many years on the older version 1. It is using the default skin with a few minor changes, to help make site updates as painless as possible.
  2. There is a new page, 'Library', which replaces 'All Books' from the old site. It is dynamically generated, and every PDF now has 'epub' and 'read' links — to download the ePub to your handheld device or read it in the browser.
  3. The Blog and Media pages have also been redesigned to simply list the titles and tags of every post, rather than have you go through several pages of content to see every link. Like the new 'Library' page, it's short and sweet.
  4. The Links page has been refreshed, and now includes a list of podcasts.
  5. The download page now features a separate, smaller archive file collection for just the epub files.
  6. Special feature: every page can have ".md" appended to its URL to view the raw Markdown, which aids machine translation and removes HTML styling clutter for copying/pasting. E.g. the Library page.

ePubs

Why ePubs?

  1. PDFs are awkward to read on small e-ink screens. Most people read on 6-inch handheld e-readers, where PDFs render tiny and the limited resources struggle to handle them. It made sense to find a workaround.
  2. Because the ePubs are generated from the original source files we already have, the electronic versions stay as close as possible to the originals.
  3. It makes work easier for people who wish to tidy-up, clean and translate the works.

Production

Creating the ePub files from the original PDFs that were hosted on the site was a mammoth task, which took several weeks, running a conversion script overnight (to save on electricity) on a desktop PC. The marker software was used to generate the content for the 'read' pages, and that same content was used with pandoc to generate the ePub files. There were some custom scripts involved also, such as to 'paint' the ePub with content from existing metadata held about the books. Not every conversion was a success, but the overall quality is the best possible without painstaking manual human intervention.

If you like what you're seeing here and appreciate the project, and want to show your support, check out the new donate page.

Happy e-reading!