Book 2.1: Making the book more personal
Nov. 30th, 2014 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteIn the past couple of posts, I've begun exploring how it might be possible to evolve beyond the current "separate worlds" model of paper and online versions of "books" to create something that I called Book 2.0: something that uses paper for what it's best at (e.g., ease and convenience of reading, unparalleled high resolution, a different and possibly better* color gamut) and that uses online media for what they're best for (e.g., ease of updating, linking to other information, use of color and animation, the possibility of sound).
* For most purposes, the reflective (subtractive) color model used by paper matches what we see in the real world better than the additive color model that we see on a computer monitor.
The biggest omission from my musings was the important concept of interactivity and customizability. Specifically, I didn't do much thinking about how to make a book adapt more easily to each reader's s individual, uniquely personal needs.
There are some obvious things that can be done even with Book 2.0. For example, replacing PDF with an EPUB-based solution would sacrifice the ability to provide a useful index*, but would allow more flexibility in the choice of font (typeface plus size) and window size, thereby allowing readers to personalize the display to better meet their specific viewing needs. On the other hand, PDF offers better bookmarking features so that you can "dogear" important pages (strictly speaking, "bookmark" those pages), and it also lets you add comments and annotations, provided that the PDF file hasn't been locked down. I won't lock down my files, so this will be possible.
* It occurred to me that I should write to David Brown, developer of the really cool HTML Indexer software, to find out whether his product could be adapted to work with EPUB files. That would eliminate the indexing problem. I'll let you know what he thinks.
Much though these various options are attractive, and lead us towards a more effective blending of print and online, my suggestions remain a fairly limited initial effort. I'd like to be able to let readers create their own version of my book by modifying the order if that seems logical to them, eliminate (or conceal) redundant material, add links to new material that's relevant, and so on. This is easy enough to do if you copy and paste the information into a word processor and then reshuffle it to meet your needs. But it lacks one key feature: if the original version of the book is modified, whether to correct an error, clarify a point, add new information, or release a whole new edition, the word processor copy won't automatically update to reflect those changes: it isn't linked to the original source files.
What's needed is something that combines the ability of a wiki to allow user-initiated revision with the ability of a a single-sourcing system or a content-management system to allow updating of the source material followed by immediate publication of the updated information in all the media you've chosen to support.
This would be a very interesting place to take my books, but it's going to take a ton of research to find a solution that I could (a) afford and (b) live with on an ongoing basis. Something to ponder, and when time permits, I'll let you know where these ideas have led me.
* For most purposes, the reflective (subtractive) color model used by paper matches what we see in the real world better than the additive color model that we see on a computer monitor.
The biggest omission from my musings was the important concept of interactivity and customizability. Specifically, I didn't do much thinking about how to make a book adapt more easily to each reader's s individual, uniquely personal needs.
There are some obvious things that can be done even with Book 2.0. For example, replacing PDF with an EPUB-based solution would sacrifice the ability to provide a useful index*, but would allow more flexibility in the choice of font (typeface plus size) and window size, thereby allowing readers to personalize the display to better meet their specific viewing needs. On the other hand, PDF offers better bookmarking features so that you can "dogear" important pages (strictly speaking, "bookmark" those pages), and it also lets you add comments and annotations, provided that the PDF file hasn't been locked down. I won't lock down my files, so this will be possible.
* It occurred to me that I should write to David Brown, developer of the really cool HTML Indexer software, to find out whether his product could be adapted to work with EPUB files. That would eliminate the indexing problem. I'll let you know what he thinks.
Much though these various options are attractive, and lead us towards a more effective blending of print and online, my suggestions remain a fairly limited initial effort. I'd like to be able to let readers create their own version of my book by modifying the order if that seems logical to them, eliminate (or conceal) redundant material, add links to new material that's relevant, and so on. This is easy enough to do if you copy and paste the information into a word processor and then reshuffle it to meet your needs. But it lacks one key feature: if the original version of the book is modified, whether to correct an error, clarify a point, add new information, or release a whole new edition, the word processor copy won't automatically update to reflect those changes: it isn't linked to the original source files.
What's needed is something that combines the ability of a wiki to allow user-initiated revision with the ability of a a single-sourcing system or a content-management system to allow updating of the source material followed by immediate publication of the updated information in all the media you've chosen to support.
This would be a very interesting place to take my books, but it's going to take a ton of research to find a solution that I could (a) afford and (b) live with on an ongoing basis. Something to ponder, and when time permits, I'll let you know where these ideas have led me.