transmute · txt ↔ epub converter

txt2epub · epub2txt — bidirectional document conversion toolkit.
Outputs EPUB 3.3 with auto-generated SVG cover.

Install

cargo install --git https://github.com/ficbase/transmute

Or build from source:

git clone git@github.com:ficbase/transmute.git
cd transmute
cargo build --release

# optional egui desktop shell
cargo build --release --features gui --bin transmute-gui

Usage

Format is auto-detected by file extension.

# txt → epub (with auto-generated SVG cover)
transmute novel.txt novel.epub

# txt → epub (with custom cover image)
transmute novel.txt novel.epub -c cover.jpg

# epub → txt
transmute novel.epub novel.txt

Features

• EPUB 3.3 output — nav.xhtml navigation, XHTML5 content pages
• Editor project API — open, inspect, edit, and repackage EPUB resources without flattening XHTML/CSS
• Auto-generated SVG cover — dark theme with title & author
• Smart chapter detection — Arabic (第1章), Chinese (第一章, 第八十四章), parts/volumes (第一部, 第X卷), Markdown (# Title)
• Metadata extraction — auto-detects title (《书名》) and author (作者：XXX)
• Auto encoding detection — BOM → UTF-8 validation → GBK fallback, works with legacy Chinese txt files
• Preserves indentation — full-width spaces (　　) kept intact in roundtrip

As a library

use transmute::{Book, Chapter, Metadata, write_epub_file, parse_epub_file};

// txt → epub
let book = Book {
    metadata: Metadata {
        title: "My Novel".into(),
        author: "Author".into(),
        language: "zh".into(),
        ..Default::default()
    },
    chapters: vec![Chapter {
        title: "Chapter 1".into(),
        body: "Once upon a time...".into(),
    }],
    cover: None, // auto-generates SVG
};
write_epub_file(&book, "output.epub")?;

// epub → txt
let book = parse_epub_file("input.epub")?;
println!("{} by {}", book.metadata.title, book.metadata.author);

For an EPUB editor, use the project API so XHTML, CSS, images, fonts, OPF, and navigation files stay editable:

use transmute::{open_epub_project_file, write_epub_project_file};

let mut project = open_epub_project_file("input.epub")?;

let mut metadata = project.metadata.clone();
metadata.title = "Edited Title".into();
project.set_metadata(metadata)?;

let css = project.read_text_resource("OEBPS/styles/style.css")?;
project.set_text_resource("OEBPS/styles/style.css", css.replace("serif", "sans-serif"))?;

write_epub_project_file(&project, "output.epub")?;

For a Tauri app that only needs the Rust EPUB core, depend on the library without default features:

transmute = { path = "../../transmute", default-features = false }

Feature flags:

• cli (default): builds the transmute CLI and enables text encoding detection
• gui: builds the optional transmute-gui egui shell

License

MIT