content.opf is the file that contains the ebook metadata like author, title, description, and reading order. Most of it will be filling in that basic information, and including links to various resources related to the text.
The content.opf is standardized. Please see our extensive Metadata Manual for details on how to fill out content.opf.
As you complete the metadata, you’ll have to order the spine and the manifest in this file. Fortunately, Standard Ebooks has a tool for that too: se print-manifest-and-spine. Run this on our source directory and, as you can guess, it’ll print out the <manifest> and <spine> tags for this work.
se print-manifest-and-spine .<manifest> <item href="css/core.css" id="core.css" media-type="text/css"/> <item href="css/local.css" id="local.css" media-type="text/css"/> <item href="images/cover.svg" id="cover.svg" media-type="image/svg+xml" properties="cover-image"/> <item href="images/logo.svg" id="logo.svg" media-type="image/svg+xml"/> <item href="images/titlepage.svg" id="titlepage.svg" media-type="image/svg+xml"/> <!--snip all the way to the end..--> <item href="text/colophon.xhtml" id="colophon.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml"/> <item href="text/titlepage.xhtml" id="titlepage.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" properties="svg"/> <item href="text/unlicense.xhtml" id="unlicense.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml"/> </manifest> <spine> <itemref idref="titlepage.xhtml"/> <!--snip all the way to the end..--> <itemref idref="colophon.xhtml"/> <itemref idref="unlicense.xhtml"/> </spine>
- The manifest is already in the correct order and doesn’t need to be edited. The spine, however, will have to be reordered to be in the correct reading order. Once we’ve done that, paste it in to content.opf and commit.
git add -A git commit -m "Complete content.opf"
+ Since this is the first time we’re editing content.opf, we’re OK with replacing both the manifest and spine tags with a guess at the correct contents. We can do this using the --in-place option. If we have to update the manifest or spine later, we can omit the option to print to standard output instead of altering content.opf directly.
se print-manifest-and-spine --in-place .
+ The manifest is already in the correct order and doesn’t need to be edited. The spine, however, will have to be reordered to be in the correct reading order. Once you’ve done that, commit!
git add -A git commit -m "Complete content.opf"