Options for Book Export?

[mmatis]

I hate asking this because I understand the whole point behind Scalar's digital-first philosophy and I'm totally on board... Buuuut I have a few old-school professors who want to have their work in Scalar available in an offline/analog form. Other than printing every page of a book manually, what options are available for converting the RDF/XML files Scalar exports into something else? Even an intermediary formal like HTML or EPUB would be great. Even the ability to render a book on one continuous page so it could be printed to a PDF would work. Please don't recommend the Scalar API. The examples on the documentation site are broken and I don't have the bandwidth to build something from scratch right now anyway. (who does?) I just want to know if there's anything out there that exists already that I might have missed. Again, I'm sorry if I'm rubbing up against the goals of this project. Just doing my due diligence!

[craigdietrich]

We experimented with an export-to-EPUB a while ago but it didn't lead anywhere, mainly because EPUB doesn't allow for the inclusion of media in a way that represents how it's included in Scalar.

You might just have to buy the professors an iPad :)

[eloyer]

There is an experimental PDF exporter at the end of the API Explorer workflow... it's pretty bare-bones, though (only exports text, doesn't put things in any particular order, etc.). It's in Dashboard > Utilities > API Explorer.

[mat-k-witts]

I have integrated dompdf successfully with other PHP MVC frameworks. This tutorial may be partially instructive for codeigniter devs.

[liar666]

Hi,

I'm one such "old-school" professor, that like having offline versions of everything (notably because I don't want to uselessly waste our poor planet's resources: re-downloading a document - be it e book, a music... - every time you use it is an aberration, particularly when you are in a situation of mobility - e.g. in a train/subway - where using Wifi - when available - or your phone's 4G/5G requires an incredible infrastructure and waste of natural resources/energy...).

The problem with the approaches described here is that they are destined to the authors (access to Dashboard), whereas the decision to get an offline version of a preferred format is taken by the reader. Also, it requires the authors to manage the deployment of various versions and maintain them in sync, which would be tedious for them.

Why not take the same approach as ReadTheDocs and allow the final user (the reader) to get the document in any format that suits her the best?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50425740/how-to-find-the-pdf-version-of-a-read-the-docs-project/52131151#52131151

NOTE: I've tried downloading a Scalar resource[1] with wget/curl but you only get a bunch of files without extension (with "invalid" XML content - according to Firefox). They probably require some JS "player"/"interpreter" to be rendered. Consequently, this approach for getting an offline version of a Scalar document is not valid for the moment too :'(.
[1] https://www.ai4t.eu/book/ai-for-teachers-an-open-textbook-version-1-english/index