[FM Discuss] the booki vision so far

Sun Sep 13 12:01:42 PDT 2009

A few comments embedded below. Booki is very exciting free software to be
developed with tons of potential. I hope this proposal helps people "get"
that. I think it does.

The only other section that you might want to develop is how Booki
integrates communication mechanisms that we've found helpful with book
sprints - real time chat, instant status updates on topics - give remote
collaborators more context for collaboration efforts.

 *Anne Gentle*
annegentle at justwriteclick.com my blog <http://justwriteclick.com> | my
book<http://xmlpress.net/publications/conversation-community/>|
Twitter <http://twitter.com/annegentle>

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 10:34 AM, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:

> hi,
>
> I am actively pursuing more leads for funding for the Booki development.
> Below is a text describing the vision. I want to trim this down to a
> short doc so I can easily ship it off to anyone interested. So, the
> below is source material, any comments welcomed.
>
> -----
>
> Booki is a revolution in publishing. Booki is based on
> functionality we have already created for FLOSS Manuals, but reworks the
> underlying architecture, and extends to features we cannot achieve with
> our current website. We have the experience already in developing a lot
> of the functionality required. We know how to develop book formatted PDF
> with bi-directional text and Unicode support, we know how to build
> systems to track copyright attributions, we have built our own web-IRC
> gateways, but most importantly we know what features work and what don't
> work for this kind of environment.
>

Using "don't" made me stop and undo the contraction to make sure the
subject-verb agreement still fit, can you just change it so it doesn't use a
contraction?

>
> Now we need to take the lessons learned and develop a Free Software with
> Collaborative Authoring and Book Sprint requirements embedded in the
> core of its design. This does not mean rewriting FLOSS Manuals, it means
> designing a new software paradigmn and re-imagining Publishing.
>
> ** Re-imagining Publishing
> Creating reusable repositories of books and dispelling the myth of sole
> authorship is simultaneously a disruptive challenge to the publishing
> industry as well as a productive environment for collaboratively
> creating many wonderful new books. This is our goal for Booki.
>
> In doing this Booki changes accepted methods of publishing. Unlike
> current publishing models, Booki does not consider authors as isolated
> producers. Booki facilitates collaborative production through simple and
> effective writing and book management tools. The Booki interface is
> designed around the authors and their needs to write, to discuss their
> views, to seek assistance with partner writers, to translate and reuse
> content. Using a platform like this you can collaborate to produce very
> high quality content, very quickly. In this type of environment we have
> written, and you can write, a high quality book in 2 days with people
> you may never meet. This already sounds very distant from traditional
> publishing methods.
>
> However, Booki also accelerates the production cycle of print-ready
> sources. In Booki print-ready source (book formatted PDF) is generated
> on the server in a matter of minutes. If you update the book then you
> can very quickly output another book-formatted PDF. Standard industry
> production processes cannot compete with this pace.
>
> Booki also changes the ways books are designed. Booki changes the method
> of design from the proprietary Indesign 'industry standard' to the CSS
> open standard. In Booki, the design of book formatted PDF is controlled
> with CSS – bringing book design to the web literate. If you know CSS you
> can change the style your book.
>

style of your book

>
> Booki also challenges the traditional publishing view on reuse, and
> posits the idea that books can always be improved. Hence books should
> always be reusable. Booki uses open content licenses by default which
> partially assists reuse. However without a repository of content and a
> technical process for managing reuse, content won't often be reused
> regardless of the license. Booki makes reuse easy by technically
> facilitating the forking, updating, improving, remixing, rewriting,
> recontextualisation, and translation of books.
>

Can you work in the idea that revisions and versioning are easier with
Booki? Recreating a specific version of a manual that matches the version of
the software is a big use case that ordinarily wikis do not fulfull well.

Speaking of "manual" - have you used the term manual yet in the proposal?
Might be useful (might box you in, though, not sure what you want there.)

>
> Translation is an especially interesting case of reuse. Where the
> traditional publishing industry cannot easily translate content due to
> its restrictive licensing and contractual requirements, Booki encourages
> and facilitates translation wherever possible. Booki provides
> translation tools to ease the migration of books across language
> boundaries. However translation is not the only language feature of
> Booki. Booki also places a high value on the production of original
> content in any language. For this reason Booki is designed to be easily
> localised by integrating the Pootle localisation platform into its
> architecture. This means anyone can translate the Booki interface to
> assist with the production of content in any language.
>

In the second sentence, do you mean "While" instead of "Where"? Not sure it
matters but might read more cleanly.

Pootle integration is NEAT-O. I don't know of a publishing system yet that
integrates with Pootle? Might tout that more if that's the case (first time
sort of thing.)

>
> Translation, reuse and republishing on this scale also challenges other
> legacy publishing concepts, notably 'Editions'. 'Editions' no longer
> make sense when books can easily and quickly be forked, translated,
> updated and republished. This is because in the publishing industry
> (costly) ISBN numbers are linked to Edition numbers. It is impractical
> to utilise ISBN in this new environment because books can be updated and
> re-released as quickly as software. So 'Edition' is no longer a suitable
> concept. Since the development of books in Booki better mirrors Open
> Source development  models we prefer to talk of Versions instead of
> Editions. Hence Booki requires a different vocabulary so as to
> differentiate the Booki publishing model from traditional publishing
> processes.
>

Ah, there's the versioning. Good discussion, but if I were say a WordPress
documentor, I might want more details? I think they want to give up on their
wiki because of all the versions of WordPress that are now available and
they can't "clone" their wiki and have multiple versions of it? I might be
wrong though.

>
> Actually Booki makes bolder challenges to what a book is. Booki is
> really a platform for the collaborative development of Comprehensive
> Texts, one output of which is books. However Booki can output your text
> to multiple formats, opening the door to RSS syndication, ebook
> distribution, or any other format for the distribution on offline or
> online media. Booki helps comprehensive texts move fluidly through
> different media. However, 'comprehensive text' is too wordy and so we
> still use the term 'book', but perhaps more liberally than traditional
> publishers.
>

Would it be okay to use a term like "online help" or "user assistance" or
"embeddable web pages" or some such?

>
> Although built to support Collaborative Authoring and Book Sprints you
> can use Booki to write a book by yourself over a longer period of time.
> You can also install your own version of Booki for your own use, or
> share an  existing installation. Whichever strategy you take;
> collaborating, writing in solo, rapidly developing books, or taking your
> time - when you have worked with Booki you will never think of
> publishing the same way again.
>
>
>
Excellent summary paragraph.

>
> adam
>
>
>
> --
> Adam Hyde
> Founder FLOSS Manuals
> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
>
> "Free manuals for free software"
> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
>
>
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