FAQ

What is and what is not Scriba?

Here is a correct definition of what Scriba is:

"Scriba eBook Maker" is an "ebook maker"

For example you can instruct Scriba to get HTML, PDF or other format files and insert their contents into an ePub or ZIP (so far) eBook. But you can also instruct it to retrieve all the lyrics of an MP3 and put them into an eBook. So do not consider Scriba a conversion tool only, because it is more than that!

  • Scriba is not a conversion tool (as Calibre, for instance)
  • Scriba is not a tool for ebook editing (as Sigil)
  • Scriba is not an ebook reader (as Adobe digital editions and Calibre)
  • Scriba does not have a user oriented interface, it is an engine to be run in the background, even behind client apps. We have implemented a UI for Scriba for converting Senate docs into ebooks but this UI is not part of the OS project (we do not think that the UI is reusable outside the Senate context)
  • Scriba is an engine to produce ebooks and can be run both standalone through a cmd line in order to retrieve Web contents, and in enterprises already holding a variety of documents stored in different formats
  • Scriba is a service in an enterprise architecture (it is easy to set up, to invoke, and can return java streams, that are useful for large docs)
  • Scriba is extensibile via a plugin architecture, so that it can be extended by developing plugins for pre-processing and transforming whatever content (XML, PDF, feed RSS, feed ATOM, non well-formed HTML) in ebooks understandable formats. As of now, scriba natively supports conversion from HTML, XHTML, PDF. We are now working to integrate RSS feeds
  • Scriba is open source, written in java, based on open components and open standards (such as ePub)

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Can Scriba read and write, for instance, in Arabian or Chinese?

Scriba internally uses UTF8 as encodings. You can customize the input or the output encoding (they can be different).

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What is the license of Scriba EbookMaker?

Scriba is released under the GPL3 license.

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Which version do I need?

You only need the binaries if you want to use and not to extend Scriba. Otherwise you need the sources too. You can choose the full version (with all the libraries) or the light version. Files to download are in the project site.

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How can I run Scriba?

First of all you need the latest Java Runtime Environment (at least 1.6).

This is a command line example: 

java -jar ScribaEBookMaker.jar -c "scf.xml" -t EPUB_STANDARD -o "this-is-your-ebook-output-file" -cr rgb

To get help, type: 

java -jar ScribaEBookMaker.jar -h

Or refer to the "Getting started section"

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How can I develop plugins?

Have a look at the "Getting started" page.

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How can I resolve the error XXX?

Here is a list of possible errors in Scriba.

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(Page content was updated on 23/11/2011)