[FM Discuss] the new admin system

[Lachlan Musicman]

great read - it properly explains the differences between fm-old and
fm-new/booki.

Well done all!

L.

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 06:42, adam hyde <adam at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> sooo...
>
> some time at last to write about how this all works. Firstly, we now have a
> mix of old and new 'fm' integrations and we are updating them as fast as
> possible. fi.flossmanuals.net and en.flossmanuals.net are the new installs
> of *both* booki and bookipublisher. The French FM will be done in April and
> Translate is being done now.
>
>
> So, what is all this falava? Well...for those that dont know the history
> here is a 4 line overview:
>
> FM was built on TWiki (still used by translate.flossmanuals.net,
> fr.flossmanuals.net and fa.flossmanuals.net). Aco (lead booki dev) and I
> realised that the old system was no longer able to keep up with what FM
> needed. We built a new system (booki). We are now implementing that.
>
> Booki is what you know from here: http://booki.flossmanuals.net
> Booki is where you create manuals...
>
> ok..so. What has all this other falava been about this 'implementing the new
> fm?'...ok...well...Booki is the new system for *editing*. It publishes also
> but the paradigm is significantly different. Booki is not built just for FM
> but is heading off into the wilderness that is the 'future of the book' (in
> my opinion). So it is built for FM but with a wider context in mind. One of
> those changes in the model is that Booki currently is a more of a book
> production toolset than a publishing mechanism. So you write there and then
> choose the format to publish your content 'elsewhere'. It is the hub for
> publishing not 'a' publisher in its own right (although I think this will
> change a lot in the months to come). This means that the content is built to
> migrate. So we are currently working on an easy method to get a book
> (manual) to go from one booki install to another. You can actually see the
> first part of this if you enter a url like:
> http://booki.flossmanuals.net/export/audacity/export/
>
> This will give you a zip file which is the audacity manual. The zip file is
> a  'booki.zip' - a specific way we organise a compressed archive so that
> booki can manage books internally and between booki and objavi (the export
> engine for booki).
>
> A quick line about Objavi - objavi is actually the engine that takes a
> booki.zip and makes a pdf or epub (etc) out of it. It is a separate code
> base and the reason for that is that we can have one or more Objavis
> installed to distribute load. For example, in FM we have one Objavi and all
> FM installations of Booki work with this. There are other interesting
> reasons why Objavi is separate to booki and the credit for forseeing the
> strength of this model needs to be given to Douglas who did the development
> for it.
>
> ok..so. this 'new' FM bizzo...we needed to make a new mechanism to pull
> content from booki.flossmanuals.net so that the readers can see and read the
> nicely formatted final manuals. That is, we needed to replace what you see
> at www.flossmanuals.net with a code base that was not tied into the 'old'
> TWiki and worked with the new booki.
>
> so...I took the 'surface' code of the old FM and rewrote it in PHP to work
> with Booki. This is what is known as 'bookipublisher'. It is now implemented
> for fi.flossmanuals.net and en.flossmanuals.net
>
> So...what does this mean for FM? Well it is another step in de-centralising
> FM. We are trying to pass as much autonomy over to 'you'. That means you can
> now create manuals freely in booki (which was not possible before). Create
> your own groups and soon a lot more...the Bookipublisher scripts enables you
> to also publish a manual to FM without having to wait on me. You can also
> blog about what you are doing on the FM blog and a few other little bits an
> pieces.
>
> This is very cool I think as it makes FM much more of a tool for a community
> rather than a tool that Adam and John use on behalf of a community :)
>
> In order to use the new mechanism you need an account. Only, at the moment,
> I can add accounts but as we develop the system we will get more 'admin'
> accounts so others can add accounts too. Those that are maintainers must
> have an account inorder to be able to update their published manuals and to
> blog. So, I want to start doing this now. However, I would prefer to do it
> slowly as there will undoubtedly be bugs and I would like to iron those out
> before inviting everyone to come and play. So, firstly please send an email
> to the list if you want to have an account. Mark the subject 'Maintainer
> Permissions for [x] Please' - where 'x' is the name of the manual or
> manuals. This way I can search the archives of the list and implement these.
> I wont do all right away as mentioned but its good to get the ball rolling.
>
> For those that want to know more about Bookipublisher the script is here:
> http://booki-dev.flossmanuals.net
>
> its in the Booki git repository. We need more people to work on this script
> as I see two immediate possibilities:
> 1. add push capabilities to push books to lulu (lulu has an api for this)
> 2. increase output formats
>
> anyways...if you cna help that would be cool...if you want to be a
> maintainer please email the list as above :)
>
> adam
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>



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