My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

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daniel_reetz
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Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by daniel_reetz »

I was really pleased to see your book featured on theAbout page at FLOSS manuals! I'm putting it on the front page of DIY Book Scanner, and I'll be writing a blog post about it soon. Great work.
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daniel_reetz
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Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by daniel_reetz »

James, are FLOSS manuals compatible with http://pediapress.com/ ? Or how do we go from a FLOSS manual to a printed book?
JDSimmons

Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by JDSimmons »

daniel_reetz wrote:James, are FLOSS manuals compatible with http://pediapress.com/ ? Or how do we go from a FLOSS manual to a printed book?
Daniel,

FLOSS Manuals has an output generator called OBJAVI. Booki, which will replace the current FM software (based on TWiki) will use the same thing. OBJAVI can produce output in several formats, one of which is PDFs sized for use by Lulu. Several sizes are available, but my book uses Crown Quarto. My book was posted on Lulu but has been temporarily removed so I can improve the PDF I submitted. It needs larger, better looking fonts, better page breaks, a new cover image, etc.

I'll have a post of this subject published tomorrow on the Booki Blog. You can check it out here:

http://blog.booki.cc/

OBJAVI can also produce output in EPUB and Open Office formats.
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daniel_reetz
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Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by daniel_reetz »

Alright, so I've read your post, and I've also read a ton about formats like DocBook, etc. Maybe it would be better for me to frame this in terms of a larger goal.

In my dream world, I would like to collect the knowledge from this community and put it into something like a wiki (but maybe not a wiki - ours has not really caught on). I would also hope that many people here would feel comfortable contributing to it, because I just don't have time to do it all myself, even if I am likely the only person who has read every single post in this forum.

Ideally, this wikithing could be printed in book form from time to time. It would credit all contributors, look decent, and be for sale at a very small profit. The profits would go to funding these forums (?). Given our expertise, it would also likely be the best resource for compact camera digitization ever made.

In other words, I think this community could collectively make and sell a very valuable ebook that would sustain the community financially while remaining Free. Is OBJAVI/Booki, in your opinion, the right way to achieve that goal?
JDSimmons

Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by JDSimmons »

daniel_reetz wrote:Alright, so I've read your post, and I've also read a ton about formats like DocBook, etc. Maybe it would be better for me to frame this in terms of a larger goal.

In my dream world, I would like to collect the knowledge from this community and put it into something like a wiki (but maybe not a wiki - ours has not really caught on). I would also hope that many people here would feel comfortable contributing to it, because I just don't have time to do it all myself, even if I am likely the only person who has read every single post in this forum.

Ideally, this wikithing could be printed in book form from time to time. It would credit all contributors, look decent, and be for sale at a very small profit. The profits would go to funding these forums (?). Given our expertise, it would also likely be the best resource for compact camera digitization ever made.

In other words, I think this community could collectively make and sell a very valuable ebook that would sustain the community financially while remaining Free. Is OBJAVI/Booki, in your opinion, the right way to achieve that goal?
Daniel,

FLOSS Manuals has definitely been set up to do exactly what you want to do, and Booki will improve upon that. Unlike a Wiki, with FM/Booki you have a table of contents to organize the contents and give it some structure. There is a "Credits" topic that when printed out will show very clearly who contributed to what chapter. You can supply your own custom style sheet when creating the PDF for your print on demand service. There are even tools for translating your book into other languages.

Getting other people to contribute to a book may or may not happen. I don't think the situation is any worse than a Wiki, but it isn't better either. Booki requires contributions under a person's real name so the book can be copyrighted properly, and not everyone is comfortable with that. Plus, writing a book is a lot of work.

But if you want to do this, I would say that Booki is an excellent way to go. It will do everything you want to do.
Tim

Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by Tim »

daniel_reetz wrote:In my dream world, I would like to collect the knowledge from this community and put it into something like a wiki (but maybe not a wiki - ours has not really caught on).
We have a wiki? Maybe if it were linked from the main page like the forum and the news are then it would get more hits. Also if the forum, news and wiki all crosslinked each other, that would help. I would have contributed to the wiki had I known we had one and I suspect others would have as well.
Ideally, this wikithing could be printed in book form from time to time. It would credit all contributors, look decent, and be for sale at a very small profit. The profits would go to funding these forums (?). Given our expertise, it would also likely be the best resource for compact camera digitization ever made.

In other words, I think this community could collectively make and sell a very valuable ebook that would sustain the community financially while remaining Free. Is OBJAVI/Booki, in your opinion, the right way to achieve that goal?
I can't say that Mediawiki (the Wiki engine behind Wikipedia) is better than OBJAVI, but it certainly does table of contents and has the ability to facilitate printed pdf books. I don't know about other formats. I really like the idea of putting together and selling an ebook that consolidates the best advice from these forums. It could pay for the webhosting at least. The advantage of Mediawiki is that many people are familiar with its syntax from Wikipedia.
JDSimmons

Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by JDSimmons »

Tim wrote:I can't say that Mediawiki (the Wiki engine behind Wikipedia) is better than OBJAVI, but it certainly does table of contents and has the ability to facilitate printed pdf books. I don't know about other formats. I really like the idea of putting together and selling an ebook that consolidates the best advice from these forums. It could pay for the webhosting at least. The advantage of Mediawiki is that many people are familiar with its syntax from Wikipedia.
Tim,

Booki has a WYSIWYG editor for HTML built in, and you can also use a raw HTML mode to enter your own tags. Since the pages are stored as HTML instead of Wiki markup it is easy to copy and paste from other sources into the book. This is especially valuable when you are translating a book as you can use Babel Fish to create the starting HTML for the translation. Booki will support writing the book for free, and you can host the finished book here, or on Lulu, or the Internet Archive, the FLOSS Manuals website, or wherever you like.

Both Sugar Labs and OLPC had Wikis that used MediaWiki, but when they wanted to create actual manuals they chose FLOSS Manuals. I have done two FLOSS Manuals myself and am working on getting the first one translated into Spanish, a language I have never learned. I strongly suggest that you both get accounts on both FLOSS Manuals and Booki.cc (we're in a period of transition; Booki.cc will replace the current TWiki based software very soon) and subscribe to the discuss mailing list. There is a demo project on FM that you can use to kick the tires.
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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
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E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
Number of books owned: 600
Country: United States
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Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by daniel_reetz »

Tim wrote:We have a wiki? Maybe if it were linked from the main page like the forum and the news are then it would get more hits. Also if the forum, news and wiki all crosslinked each other, that would help. I would have contributed to the wiki had I known we had one and I suspect others would have as well.
http://www.diybookscanner.org/wiki/ (your criticism there is fair enough; I didn't want put it on the main page because I was too busy when it went up. original thread here: http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/vie ... ?f=3&t=180

One more question, is Booki something we can host locally? (apologies if this sounds ignorant; there's just so much terminology flying around that I'm having a tough time following. I know we can install MediaWiki and a plugin, mostly because I have Dreamhost 1-click installs to rely on).
JDSimmons

Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by JDSimmons »

daniel_reetz wrote: One more question, is Booki something we can host locally? (apologies if this sounds ignorant; there's just so much terminology flying around that I'm having a tough time following. I know we can install MediaWiki and a plugin, mostly because I have Dreamhost 1-click installs to rely on).
Daniel,

Booki should be open source software that you can host anywhere, but it is not yet. If you were to do a book now you would either request on the mailing list to begin a new book on FM and then migrate to Booki later (maybe a few weeks from now, not sure) or start it with Booki to begin with and make sure that it doesn't get cleared out when the general migration begins. This would be a question for the mailing list. I can understand the desire for your own Booki, but consider too the advantages of being part of the booki.cc site and being part of a community of book authors.

There is a manual on Booki on the Booki site, of course written using Booki. Look at that, subscribe to the mailing list, and see what you think.
JDSimmons

Re: My FLOSS Manual On E-Books

Post by JDSimmons »

daniel_reetz wrote:One more question, is Booki something we can host locally? (apologies if this sounds ignorant; there's just so much terminology flying around that I'm having a tough time following. I know we can install MediaWiki and a plugin, mostly because I have Dreamhost 1-click installs to rely on).
You can download Booki software here:

http://booki-dev.flossmanuals.net/wiki/Downloads

It looks fairly involved to install, and is still under development, but you could host your own Booki if you needed to.
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