Proposal: Creating EPUB/PDF editions of LDP documents for modern readers

[marcel-schliwka]

Title

Proposal: Creating EPUB/PDF editions of LDP documents for modern readers

Body

Hi everyone,

I'd like to propose a project that builds on top of the existing LDP content: creating well-formatted, downloadable EPUB and PDF editions of the guides and HOWTOs so people can read them on e-readers, tablets, or in print.

Motivation

The LDP collection is an incredible resource — many of its guides are still among the top search results when people look up Linux topics. But the way people consume technical documentation has changed. Readers today expect to be able to download a book to their Kindle, read offline on a tablet, or print a clean PDF. The current HTML-only format limits how far this content can travel.

There are plenty of mirrors of tldp.org, but what's missing is a well-typeset, multi-format edition that makes the content feel like a proper book rather than a 2004-era web page.

What I'd like to do

• Parse the existing source documents (DocBook, SGML, HTML) into a clean, structured intermediate format (Markdown with frontmatter metadata)
• Generate EPUB and PDF outputs with proper typography, table of contents, navigation, and syntax highlighting for code blocks
• Host the downloads for free on a personal VPS (Stockholm, Sweden) where I'm trying to mirror the original as well.
• Open source the entire build pipeline on GitHub so anyone can contribute, suggest improvements, or rebuild the outputs themselves
• Preserve attribution — every original author and contributor credited, every license preserved as-is

For inspiration: Daniel Shiffman's The Nature of Code uses a similar approach — a single structured source that generates both a beautiful website and a print-ready book. Something like that, but for the LDP.

What this is NOT

• Not a fork or replacement of TLDP
• Not a commercial product — no sales, no ads, no monetization of any kind
• Not a claim of ownership — the LDP content belongs to its authors and community

About me

I'm a nurse and hobby developer from east-southern Germany. I work with Linux daily and discovered the LDP while learning. I'd like to give back to a project that has helped so many people, including me. I don't have a large platform or a big team behind me — just enthusiasm and the time to make this happen.

Questions for the maintainers and community

1. Are you open to this kind of derivative project?
2. Are there any concerns I should be aware of regarding specific document licenses or author preferences?
3. Would it make sense to coordinate this with any existing efforts, or should I proceed independently and share the results?

I'd rather ask first than assume. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

— Marcel

[pbiering]

@ser - what do you think?

[ser]

Sure, it's a fantastic idea!

[SuperCowProducts]

Could this be of any use?

[ser]

I think we would not be able to live without this software, it's the base of our document processing on the builder: https://github.com/tLDP/LDP/blob/master/.github/woodpecker.yml

[SuperCowProducts]

@ser
I see, how would I use it to generate PDFs though?

From its README it seems as though ldptool would be the starting point: sadly I can't even compile the Python version needed to run it for my architecture (arm64 linux)! I did get the Python package to install in Python 3.6 (which I installed successfully though missing a lot of optional packages by the looks of it) using uv venv, but when I ran ldptool there were errors, which I'm worried could even be to do with the Python installation itself.

If only there was a Docker container for all of this, otherwise I fear others will not be able to reproduce...

[ser]

Yes you need to downgrade your stack, see in the builder which Ubuntu version we are using