[NTLK] Converting NewtonBooks to ePub

[J Caffiney]

Ed -- thanks for the encouragement. You're right about "moving a picture in
Word." Getting the text out is straightforward. Getting it out *correctly
formatted* is where it gets fun.

Nic -- funny you should ask. I'm hoping to eventually build a bidirectional
converter. The .pkg to ePub converter is further along, but I've got the
other direction generating valid packages that load in Einstein. Still
early and very rough, but the hard part (serializing valid NOS binary
frames back into a Newton-readable package) is working.

Once I've cleaned it up a bit I'll share the tool and some sample
conversions. I'd love to know if there's interest in a web-based version
too (drag and drop, runs entirely in the browser, no install).

-J

On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 4:32 AM Nic Malone via NewtonTalk <
newtontalk at newtontalk.net> wrote:

>
> It is trivial to make Newton ebooks if you have a way of running
> NewtonPress but has anyone thought of coding an app or script that does
> this on a modern Mac? I've vibe-coded a MacOS Quick Action to convert TXT
> format ebooks into the Notes app of the iPod Classic using some scarcely
> documented info on the tagging syntax iPods used to link notes together but
> I know nothing about how Newton books are supposed to work and suspect it's
> more complex.
>
> Nic
> >
> > I used to host a website where I offered a bunch of Newton books. While
> converting the documents to Newton books was trivial...
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