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Originally Posted by ig88
Being new to MobiPocket (contemplating buying an Iliad this July)- could you elaborate -
What is a manifest file? What is it for? Does this mean each "book" will be two files (the book and the manifest)? if it is two files, do you see two files when browsing for book titles?
How do you create the manifest file?
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Practically speaking, a book on the iLiad consists of a directory containing a manifest file plus 1 or more additional files -- how many will depend on the content of your book. The iLiad browser treats any directory with a manifest file as a book. You only see one line in the browser describing the book -- regardless of however many files may comprise it behind the scenes. The browser treats any directory without one as a folder into which you may descend and in which you may find books or additional folders.
The manifest file contains information in XML format with elements that tell the iliad various useful things like the title, a description, the filename containing the cover image, the file or files containing the actual content of the book, etc. It gets create one of two ways.
The first way happens when you drop a naked PDF, MobiPocket, html or other supported format ebook onto the iLiad. The first time you open it, the iLiad will automatically reorganize the book into its own directory containing the book and a bare-bones manifest file.
The second way it happens is that you create the book directory and its contents yourself by hand, or using software. It is possible to conconct a fairly complicated layout for books, particularly those consisting of many html files with previous and next references all over the place (see iRex's documentation for more details), but fortunately the normal case is quite simple.
Here is what I use for most of my books. Each of my books generally consists of three files, manifest.xml, book.{pdf,mobi,prc,html} and cover.jpg. I create a directory named after the book (this is only a convention, the iLiad doesn't care). Inside that, I drop in the book.* file, cover.jpg and my boilerplate manifest.xml, editing the <Title></Title>, <Description></Description> and <startpage></startpage> elements to match the book. As long as I make my coverpage file a jpeg named "cover.jpg", I don't need to edit the <image></image> line.
You may download my boilerplate manifest.xml from the following URL:
http://bruce.howard.org/iliad/manifest.xml