Converting Pressbooks .wrx file to republish in pretext

[Ben Tucker]

Hi all,

 

Please accept the standard apologies if I missed an earlier discussion/explanation of this in a previous thread. I looked, but didn’t see it.

 

I am interested in revising an existing OER textbook titled Choosing & Using Sources that was published using Pressbooks. It can be downloaded as a PDF, .epub, .mobi, or Pressbooks’s .wrx file (if I can get a copy from the author).

 

If anyone has gone down this road before, and has documented their experiences, or has sage advice, I would love to hear about it.

 

Thanks,

Ben

 

Benjamin Tucker | Digital Services & Outreach Librarian
University of Puget Sound, Collins Memorial Library

1500 N. Warner St. CMB 1021

Tacoma, WA 98416
phone: (253) 879-3667

Pronouns: he/him/his
btu...@pugetsound.edu
http://pugetsound.edu/library 

 

[Rob Beezer]

Dear Ben,

> Please accept the standard apologies if I missed an earlier
> discussion/explanation of this in a previous thread. I looked, but didn’t see it.

You didn't miss anything, we've not discussed this yet.

> I am interested in revising an existing OER textbook titled Choosing & Using

> Sources <https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/> that was published

> using Pressbooks. It can be downloaded as a PDF, .epub, .mobi, or Pressbooks’s
> .wrx file (if I can get a copy from the author).
>
> If anyone has gone down this road before, and has documented their experiences,
> or has sage advice, I would love to hear about it.

As you know, it'd be pretty hard to get much out of a PDF, except maybe a bunch
of text with a tool like "pdftotext". You can unzip an EPUB, but then it will
be HTML, which may not be too easy to work with.

I have looked closely at the downloadable "Pressbooks XML" that is available for
this "Soil Hydrology and Biophysics" book. Even though it is XML, a whole lot
of structure is missing, or coded in presentational ways (e.g. some minor
divisions only delimited by an initial "h6" heading). You can get huge chunks
of text out, though.

So I think the short answer is that there is no automated route, and even worse,
any automated conversion is probably going to be unsatisfactory - these outputs
just aren't very capable.

I did do about a 12-page translation of the Soils book by hand (I can send it to
you off-list, if you'd like). So it is possible. Feasible even. And there
would be opportunities during the conversion to take advantage of some PreTeXt
features that are not even possible with Pressbooks.

The style and content of "Choosing & Using Sources" reminds me of our "Sound
Writing" handbook, so I'd expect we could do something similar. I've converted
that to EPUB quite successfully, and that conversion is very close to being
ready. And don't forget converting to braille, which might go very well, since
I didn't see any math. ;-)

I'd be happy to help you get started if you want to embark on a non-automated
conversion.

Rob

[Ben Tucker]

Thanks. That gives me a lot to think about. I have been wanting to practice with Pretext for my first time, but needed a project to work with. This presents a such an opportunity. Sounds like I have a few options related to an export/conversion, although they may all require some tinkering.

BT

> On Nov 13, 2020, at 8:09 PM, Rob Beezer <bee...@ups.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Ben,

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[Benjamin Atchison]

Hi All.
I've been away from the community for a while, despite the daily googlegroup updates populating my inbox.  I'm reviving on old thread to see if there might be any new developments with converting PB to PTX.

A DoE funded grant called Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens (ROTEL) is currently winding down.  The grant oversaw the development of some 26 OER over three years.  The majority of OER were housed in Pressbooks.  Now that the contract with PB is ending, authors are (not surprisingly) exploring other options for future edits and adaptations of their works.  It is my understanding that authors are still able to download their own XML, but based upon Rob's earlier reply, I am guessing not much has changed in terms of conversion ease/feasibility.  Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts or updates on this idea.

Thanks for all of your hard work over the years.

-Ben

[Rob Beezer]

Dear Ben,

Great to hear from you! (Welcome back.)

No real news to add to this. Turning XML into XML can be fun, but my comments
below remind me how much is missing from PB. Several years ago I did some
conversions from CNXML (Open Stax) to PreTeXt, which went pretty well, but still
had some stumbling blocks.

Maybe some pandoc reader (of a PB output format) could be hit with Oscar's
pandooc writer to recover some content, with some structure?

The main question is probably: recover as much ASCII text as possible and
structure it from scratch with PreTeXt, or do something automated and go crazy
laboriously fixing it up. Sorry I don't have much that is anymore hopeful than
that.

Rob

> Using Sources <https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/ <https://

> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/4dab78f5-44b2-012f-bacf-
> c19379311284%40ups.edu>.

>
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[David W. Farmer]

I think Rob noted the key point: we can try to extract the
content from the other format, but then someone is going to have
to do the work of adding the appropriate PreTeXt markup. We are
converting from a relatively unstructured format to more
structured, and that cannot be automated.

Also, once a book is in PreTeXt there are many more options for
interactivity and other features.

Regards,

David

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>

[Benjamin Atchison]

Thank you both.  I anticipated a similar reply, and was asking for a friend.  The grant's leadership is exploring options for their participants, and I will continue to promote considering PTX for conversion.

There is a new grant getting started with an anticipated 17 projects created over two years.  Authoring platforms and hosting are always concerns.  I appreciate always being able to come back to this group for guidance.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/ad7b2449-2372-acb2-b86a-3a83624e51b1%40aimath.org.

[Rob Beezer]

On 3/4/25 09:34, David W. Farmer wrote:
> I think Rob noted the key point:  we can try to extract the
> content from the other format

More and more, I want to say that if you are going to take all the time needed
to create careful content, then you want it in a container where you can convert
it to all useful output formats easily, for a long time. Present and future
formats. Anything else is wasting your valuable time and effort.

I've always felt this way, but I cringe now when somebody suggests authoring in
LaTeX because accessible PDFs will be here next year (always next year). Sounds
like PB has similarly let you down.

Rob

[Benjamin Atchison]

Unfortunately, the decision to host projects with PB was above my paygrade.  But yes, they let the grant leadership down, as we all could have predicted.

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[Rob Beezer]

On 3/6/25 09:50, Benjamin Atchison wrote:
> the decision to host projects with PB was above my paygrade.

Yes, I know. All too well. The siren song of "easy" and "visual" is too much
for some to resist. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. We'd all be
better off if we were still using troff. ;-) ;-) ;-)

Rob

[Benjamin Atchison]

Where have I read that before? :)

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[Rob Beezer]

A broken record. I only have so many bits developed. When I was teaching, I'd
get a new audience every few months. You've been around longer.

On 3/6/25 11:57, Benjamin Atchison wrote:
> Where have I read that before? :)
>

> On Thu, Mar 6, 2025 at 2:45 PM 'Rob Beezer' via PreTeXt support <pretext-
> sup...@googlegroups.com <mailto:pretext...@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>
> On 3/6/25 09:50, Benjamin Atchison wrote:
> > the decision to host projects with PB was above my paygrade.
>
> Yes, I know.  All too well.  The siren song of "easy" and "visual" is too much
> for some to resist.  Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.  We'd all be
> better off if we were still using troff.  ;-) ;-) ;-)
>
> Rob
>
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