[FM Discuss] the booki vision so far

adam hyde adam at flossmanuals.net
Mon Sep 14 16:38:49 PDT 2009


hey Anne,

thanks for the comments :) i will rework the text and soon post some
more for feedback :)

adam



On Sun, 2009-09-13 at 14:01 -0500, Anne Gentle wrote:
> 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 | my book |
>         Twitter
> 
> 
> 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
>         
>         
>         _______________________________________________
>         Discuss mailing list
>         Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
>         http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
-- 
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





More information about the Discuss mailing list