I have been putting lots of love in­to Aran­du­ka an eBook man­ager, (which is look­ing very good late­ly, thanks!), and I did­n't want it to al­so be an eBook read­er.

But then I thought... how hard can it be to read ePub? Well, it's freak­ing easy!

Here's a good start at stack­over­flow.­com but the short of it is... it's a zip with some XML in it.

One of those XML files tells you where things are, one of them is the TOC, the rest is just a small stat­ic col­lec­tion of HTM­L/C­SS/im­ages.

So, here are the in­gre­di­ents to rol­l-y­our-own ePub read­er wid­get in 150 LOC:

• Use python's zip­­file li­brary to avoid ex­­plod­ing the zip (that's lame)

• Use El­e­­ment Tree to parse said XML files.

• Use PyQt's QtWe­bKit to dis­­­play said col­lec­­tion of XM­L/C­SS/Im­ages

• Use this recipe to make QtWe­bKit tell you when it wants some­thing from the zip­­file.

Plug some things to oth­er­s, shake vig­or­ous­ly, and you end up with this:

Here's the code (as of to­day) and the UI file you need.

Miss­ing stuff:

• It does­n't dis­­­play the cov­­er.

• It on­­ly shows the top lev­­el of the ta­ble of con­­tents.

• I on­­ly test­ed it on two books ;-)

• It sure can use a lot of refac­­tor­ing!

Nei­ther should be ter­ri­bly hard to do.