[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
>
>
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--
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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