For Power Users

If you are a power user such as a web-site developer, or someone who wants to convert large batches of files, then you will want to run the command-line program (GutenMark). Click here to learn more about that.

For Casual Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Leopard Users

If you are a casual user who just wants things to be as simple as possible, then you will want to run the graphical front-end program (GUItenMark). Click here to learn more about that.

For Mac OS X non-Leopard Users

Mac OS X users fall into an unfortunate gray area, since most of you want to be casual users who interact only with a GUI, yet the GUI is not yet working on Mac OS X versions prior to 10.5. So you are forced to be power users and to interact with the command line. To soften the blow a little, I'll give you an explicit step-by-step example of a couple of simple operations.

Firstly, note that when you install GutenMark on your Mac, you appear to get a normal application, with a desktop icon you can double-click to run the program. However, double-clicking the icon doesn't make anything happen, because the GUI aborts immediately in Mac OS X versions prior to 10.5. Nevertheless, performing the installation is the necessary first step in running GutenMark or GutenSplit from the command line.

For the first example, let's suppose that on your desktop you've downloaded the Project Gutenberg file called "mcrst11.txt", which happens to be The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, translated by the Reverend William Benham. Let's suppose, further, that you want to create an HTML file from this, called "mcrst11.html", also on your desktop. First run the Terminal program. On the Finder menu, you can find this under Go/Utilities. All of the remaining steps are typed into the command-line interface in the Terminal program:

cd Desktop/GUItenMark.app/Contents/Resources
./GutenMark ~/Desktop/mcrst11.txt ~/Desktop/mcrst11.html

You should now see that an icon for "mcrst11.html" appears on your desktop. If you double-click it, you can read the now-formatted etext in a browser. Realize that these are just the steps for a basic conversion. There are many ways you can modify the behavior of the converter, but you would need to look at the "power user" instructions to figure them out.

For a second example, suppose that you wanted instead to split up the HTML so that you get a file for each chapter, rather than a single monolithic HTML file that contains the entire etext. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that you want to create a folder called "mcrst11" on your desktop, and that this folder will contain the HTML files for the individual chapters:

cd Desktop/GUItenMark.app/Contents/Resources
./GutenMark ~/Desktop/mcrst11.txt mcrst11.html
./GutenSplit mcrst11.html mcrst11_
rm mcrst11.html
mkdir ~/Desktop/mcrst11
mv mcrst11_*.html ~/Desktop/mcrst11

You should seek a desktop icon for a folder called "mcrst11" appear. If you open this folder by double-clicking on it, you'll find a series of files called "mcrst11_000.html", "mcrst11_001.html", and so forth. The file mcrst11_000.html is the table of contents. Double-click it to open it in a browser, and you can navigate to all of the other chapters from there.

For iPhone/iPod Touch Users

iPhone users are "power users" by definition, since no GUI frontend is provided for that platform. Nevertheless, Jason Pollock, who came up with the idea for iPhone support and went to the trouble of figuring out how to do it, provides us with the following notes on usage:

Once installed, GutenMark can be found under "Utilities".
GutenMark takes a little while on the iPhone, but it does work.
To use it, you will need access to a command line, either through ssh, or terminal.

For example, here are the command-line instructions which Jason's Gutenberg SciFi repository installs "The Emancipatrix":

/usr/bin/GutenMark --profile=en --no-toc --config=/etc/GutenMark.cfg /var/mobile/Media/EBooks/The_Emancipatrix/5699.txt /var/mobile/Media/EBooks/The_Emancipatrix/5699-h.htm
/usr/bin/GutenSplit --no-toc /var/mobile/Media/EBooks/The_Emancipatrix/5699-h.htm /var/mobile/Media/EBooks/The_Emancipatrix/Chapter_