[FM Discuss] weihnacht prezzy

[adam hyde]

ola,

so...FM lab has been busy behind the scenes. As many know, we have
received some funding support from the OSI and Archive.org for the
development of a new collaborative authoring platform. The platform has
been mentioned several times on this list as a future cure all for our
technical wishes and frustrations, a revolution in publishing, a
promise, and a vague idea which may or may not be happening.

Well, I am very pleased to say that Booki has been happening, and it is
in pretty good shape. We are now in a position to show the FM Community
what we are working on and invite discussion about the project.

Before proceeding, I want to make it clear that we are not yet
interested in bug reports. The platform is alpha and we wish to do a lot
more work on it before we start testing on scale. However, when we are
ready to start testing I invite everyone on this list to consider
helping us test the platform. I will post to the list specific testing
request and information on how to submit bug reports when the time
comes.

For now what we are primarily interested in is your thoughts on the
possibilities for the platform, and any comments you may wish to make
good, bad or otherwise. We are also looking for people to help us
immediately in the following ways:
* help us find some more $ for development. I would like to find $25,000
USD from somewhere quickly if possible to continue the development. If
you know where we can find this then now is your time to help out! :)
* become a developer (primarily the platform is written in python)
* help us document that platform so that developers know what it is we
are doing and can find a place to start
* give us a fat new machine and free rackspace to host the project

The dev team consists of Aco and Douglas, with me being the distracting
milestone manager ;) So far the development has split into two threads -
booki development which is done by Aco, and the import (espri) and
export (objavi) components which are developed by Doug.

For those that are interested in helping with the dev, please see see
here:
http://booki-dev.flossmanuals.net/

for the git repos etc.

We also have a dev channel in irc:
irc.freenode.net
#fm-tech

ok...a few words about Booki and what it is. First, as mentioned above,
Booki is really a ecosystem of 3 technologies. The namesake code base
(Booki) is where users create accounts, create books, and collaborate.
Booki interacts with Objavi, the export engine, to export to book
formatted PDF, screen formatted PDF, Openoffice (odt), and epub. Booki
also interacts with Espri, the import engine, to import from
Archive.org, and any epub that is online. Espri will also, in time,
manage imports from FLOSS Manuals, and Wikibooks.

So, the set up is a little different from FM as we know it. At its heart
- a tech for the collaborative development of books - Booki and FM are
the same and many of the tools look the same but they act slightly
differently - you will see when you look at the edit interface for
example.

On another level, Booki is quite different from FM. Not in just the way
the background code is structured, but the ideas manifest in the
interface will be new to many. For example, Booki works with users and
groups. FM is one group, in our example installation, and we have many
groups. A book is created and owned by a Booki user, and that book can
be associated with none, one, or more groups. For example, Inkscape may
wish to develop several manuals, and associate some with FM, associate a
subset of these with the 'Free Software for Design' group, associate
some books only with the Free Software Development Group etc.

This is quite different from how we act now, and it raises a lot of
interesting questions and exciting new possibilities for working
methodologies.

Also, the Booki user has much more control and many of the admin tasks
that are solely mine in FM are farmed out to owners/maintainers etc. For
example, publishing will be the responsibility of the owner/maintainer
and we place these tools in their hands.

Also, we have a very interesting focus on importing content.
Specifically, Archive.org has 1.6 million books which are available as
epubs. You can import any of these into booki and work on them. Many of
these are fantastically interesting books...take a look at the
archive.org text archive and you will see.

Additionally, books can be uploaded immediately to Archive.org..this is
the start of us providing more distribution channels for content. If you
can imagine, books might also be made available by rss, torrent, iphone
download etc etc etc

So...one last word before I post the URL. Doug and Aco have done a
stellar job. They are both amazing to work with and I think Booki is
going to become more and more extraordinary. Many many thanks to them
both for being such a pleasure to work with and for doing such
outstanding work.

have a peep:
http://www.booki.cc

note : There is NO design in place yet, and you will discover bugs,
thats not the point. Try and get a feel for the ideas inherent in the
tool. This is what we are interested in discussing.

adam



-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 177 4935122
Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals

"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about