[FM Discuss] weihnacht prezzy

Fri Dec 18 08:51:28 PST 2009

Congratulations, Adam, Aco, and Douglas! Can I send some Altoids to
fuel further development? Any other treats you guys are into lately?
:)

Love what you're doing here. I will see what I can do towards some of
the action items you list.

I really like this "group" idea - though right now, I couldn't tell
you whether the person is a member of the group or if the content is a
member of the group. I like the concept, it plays well in both
collaborative authoring and "freeing" content. Maybe that's the point
- that group inclusion can be writers, readers, or the content itself.

Thanks for sharing -
Anne

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 7:54 AM, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> 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
>
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