[FM Discuss] fm.booki tips and where are we going with all this...

Mon Dec 13 06:31:16 PST 2010

I'm still confused. 

I've started the Zotonic manual on Floss. Don't understand how to move it to booki.

Thanks,

Lloyd R. Prentice

-----Original Message-----
From: "adam hyde" <adam at flossmanuals.net>
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 6:39am
To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
Subject: [FM Discuss] fm.booki tips and where are we going with all this...

hi,

so, i have just done a bit of work templating booki and getting it to
work with fm. What I can say is that it is really good to see Booki
applied to a topic-centric community like fm. The 'main' install of
booki (http://www.booki.cc) is for any book on any topic and booki was
really designed to work for both this context and for communities like
FM. So, its good to get into the nuances of booki within this second
context and i can say that its sooooooooooooooooo much better working
with booki in this setting than working on the old platform. so,
congrats to us...especially Aco for making booki so rockn

ok. so a few insights as to how this new workflow will work (note i
sometimes use 'book' and 'manual' to mean the same thing). There are a
number of things that will be noticeable and i wanted to bring these up
now. the main changes you will see in the work flow are:
1. the addition of groups
2. anyone can make a new manual 
3. you have a profile page
4. you have more control over the book (less admin for john and me, more
for you :)

so... fm.booki (http://booki.flossmanuals.net) has groups, which the old
version did not. So when you import or create a new book *you* are the
administrative owner (we will call this role the 'book admin')  of that
book but that book will not appear anywhere except in 'your manuals'
until you add it to a group...

ok..so why? well, what this means effectively is that we have a kind of
private/public sphere. You can work on a manual without it being listed
anywhere and when you want to make it public (so others can easily
contrib) you then either:
1. create a new group and add the manual to that group
2. join an existing book and add the manual to that group

a book/manual can only belong to one group...

it also means that you can fork a book and work on it as you like. There
are very interesting scenarios for this...consider, for example, that
you are a CiviCRM consultant...you can copy the CiviCRM manual and not
list it in a group, then make that version specific to a specific client
of yours....(for example)...no-one sees the manual but u and those that
you invite to edit it (by sending them the direct url to the /edit page
for the book)...make the book formatted PDF, send it to lulu, send your
client a book about their CiviCRM install ...IMPRESSIVE...we are trying
to help this kind of scenario...it will take a while for people to catch
on to the possibilities I think but I think there could be truly
wonderous benefits for the promotion and distribution of free software
with a workflow like this...its also a way of working that i think
proprietary softwares and proprietary books about free softwares cannot
match

next...groups are embryonic at the moment but they will become more...we
hope that they will become hubs for specific topics...if you like audio,
for example, you might join the audio editing group and first be
interested in working on the Audacity manual but then you get drawn into
working on the Ardour manual...we dont yet have these communication
channels wired in but they are coming...

so, groups are extremely important and I encourage you to join the ones
that you are interested in even though that doesnt yet really give you
anything extra...but soon it will....

also you can make your own groups. I will play big brother on this for a
while as I would not like to see a million groups appear with no purpose
or with ugly names or duplicates. 

so, please create the groups you want and we see how it all works out...

you can also now create manuals yourself...before either John or I had
to do this but now you can do as you like. Again I will look over this
but I think I will only change something if the manual created is not
about free software. you can (as noted above) then add your book to a
group.

next,..you have a profile page with your account. at the moment this
means that others can read a little about you...but soon this will mean
more....so, just keep an eye on changes coming in the next weeks in this
area...

lastly...you now can export books yourself. this means that from the
'export' tab of a manual you can export to book formatted PDF, epub
etc...this means you can make your own books if you like -make a book
formatted pdf, push to a printer or print on demand service.... if you
want to push a manual to FM then at the moment its the old system of
yelling out to John or me on this list and we will push the new version
to fm...but this will change too shortly...however, what all this also
means is that booki.flossmanuals.net could be a good toolset for a free
software that never pushes to fm...you could write your own book, draw
people in from the greater fm community (using the coming communication
features) and just make great free books about great free software..

one of the biggest keys to this vision is that we get people talking to
each other and drawing in those interested to help with any given
manual...this is what we are working on next and I hope it will prove an
exciting new way for fm to work :)

thats the plan...its going to be interesting to see where this all
goes....

adam

-- 
vote for booki in the Open Web Awards!

Booki (the latest FM project - http://www.booki.cc - a collaborative
publishing platform) is in the final of the Open Web Awards.
Great! We are 1 of 3 projects. If we win we get 5000 which we will use
to do a code sprint on a tropical island somewhere ;)

please please please register :
http://www.drumbeat.org/user/register

and vote for us:
http://www.drumbeat.org/project/open-web-publishing

and pass this around!!!! :)

Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals &
Booki Project Manager 

Contact Information
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

Free Software for making Free Books
http://www.booki.cc/

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