What book are we going to start for you ? Do you just want
to pick one or a few and create links to them on the
textbook site, along with links to the specific frameworks
that they need to follow ? With maybe a brief bit of text
mentioning what the book is being built for, for those who
happen to stumble onto it ..
-- Karl
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The one thing about PDF, whether or not Adobe suddenly
starts trying to extract payments for its use, is that it
seems to make my computer slow down, be a system hog, and
not be flexible at all in terms of printing at different
sizes or things like that, or of course modifying the
document. To me, a big HTML document, or just a text one,
might be more flexible for printing cuz I could just copy
and paste it to another program to print, or adjust the
size of the print in my browser and print from there.
Doesn't seem like there is a clear best solution though.
-- Karl
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Wouter wrote:
>Standard GNU/Linux have a few pdf-readers,
>like xpdf, kghostview, gv,ggv. KDE and
>OpenOffice can print to PDF. Many of these
>programs are GPL, so what could Adobe do about
>that?
The GPL is irrelevant here since Adobe holds the PDF
patents. This fact simply makes me feel uneasy - that
doesn't mean we shouldn't use HTML->PDF convertors
since obviously Adobe thinks its best interests are
served by trying to get as many people hooked on PDF
as possible (at least for the moment).
The worse thing that would happen is that we would
have to stop if Adobe suddenly did the same thing that
the MP3 people did and start the process of charging
licensing fees /after/ their file format was firmly
entrenched. IIRC their patent claims over PS are more
dubious and thus less enforceable (if not expired).
That makes me feel a bit less uneasy - a free
alternative (akin to Ogg Vorbis using the sound
example) would be great but isn't even close to being
a reality. It just would be a shame if we got hooked
on the pdf thing and also got stung.
--mav
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Karl-
> What can we do to bring more attention to this
> project ? Are there ways to get it registered in
> online directories more quickly ? What about
> submitting it for a Slashdot article ? (Should we
> wait until more work has been done before we get it
> Slashdotted, or do it in conjuction with the
> announcement of the Wikimedia Foundation?)
In all due time. We are still working out /really/
basic things like license issues, name, software needs
and basic policies on what to even have in our
project.
For now, just search for open/free textbooks and email
their authors - hopefully some of them will decide to
continue development of their textbook here. I'm sure
others will grant us use of their textbooks under the
GNU FDL (for cases where their textbooks are not
already under that license).
But let's mainly concentrate on establishing the
basics first. We will get mentioned in the upcoming
Wikimedia Foundation press release, but we will be
mostly an aside until we actually have something
impressive to show off - such as our first feature
complete textbook.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Karl wrote:
>Why PS instead of PDF ?
PDF is one of the flagship file formats of Adobe - they allow people to create
pdfs fairly freely now but they could change that at any time. So we should
rely on a proprietary file format.
PS is a bit more open since its code wasn't locked down until fairly late in
its development (IIRC PDF is based on PS) and a bit of an unwanted step-child
since PDF came on the scene. It used to be much more common (remember "Print
to file" in Windows 3.x products? Those files where .ps) but now is just the
file that is sent to Post Script (PS) printers - it is hidden from users.
But then I'm working on just a vague recollection so I am probably missing
something or got something really wrong.
>Is there a reader for it ?
I can read it with software that comes standard in my Linux distro but Windows
users haven't been able to read PS with a default install for years, IIRC. I
was thinking more along the lines of actually *printing* the darn thing - if
people want an electric version they can visit our website.
But there are free html->pdf converters...
>It seems sometimes like the world is
>lacking a decent open-source word
>processing / printing file format.
I could hardly agree more - this is a huge omission.
--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Toby wrote:
>The periodic table isn't covered by copyright anyway.
>Most of our [[en:List of ...]] articles are similarly free;
>there is no copyright on information, only creative work.
>(IANAL, and it'd be interesting to ask one just how far that goes.)
The table itself, no. But the particular table in Wikipedia has different
colors for the series, a particular selection of which series to have, and
different colors for the different states of each element - all that is
creative work and is under copyright.
And a chemistry textbook without its own periodic table is very strange - just
copy the darn thing Karl. :)
--mav
Wow! The more I read in this website the more I like.
We have also discussed having hard copies of books. Well the pmWiki are
thinking about how to do just that:
http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/Development/WikiBooks
It looks like it would work (I would propose we use ps instead of pdf
though...).
--mav
Technical note: After some digging I found out that PmWiki is written in PHP
(just like our software) and it looks like it is also covered by the GNU GPL
(just like our software's license).
Check out:
http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/PmWiki/FilesAndDirectories
which has this line:
COPYING is a copy of the GNU General Public License.
-- mav