Objavi, Bookjs, and Booktype: how do these work together? - Booktype Support Discussions on Sourcefabric Forum

Ross Laird · Post edited by Ross Laird at 2012-11-14 23:52:00

I'm a bit confused about the distinctions (or similarities) between Objavi and Bookjs. This blog posting by Borko seems to imply that Booktype is moving away from Objavi and replacing it with Bookjs: "...we are in a final stage of switching to a new rendering engine that is based on pure WebKit and uses our very own BookJS project." But then, later in the same posting, Borko says "we are also working on a more agile Objavi that can be used by a number of different clients..."

So, will Bookjs be integrated with Objavi in some way? Or are they separate projects? And which one should I install (or both) on my local machine if I want to make the most versatile use of Booktype?

adam

so,

Booktype is the production platform. Objavi is the renderer. Thats the main
distinction. They are two separate projects. Objavi could service other
softwares as a renderer.

BookJS is going to be integrated into Objavi as part of the renderer for
PDF. That means you will be able to edit the book on the browser and see
how lit looks as a PDF (using BookJS) then renderer it to PDF for printing
and it will look exactly the same..

adam

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 5:50 AM, Ross Laird <<br />booktype-support@lists.sourcefabric.org> wrote:

> I'm a bit confused about the distinctions (or similarities) between Objavi
> and Bookjs. This<http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/community/blog/1472/From-paper-to-pixels-and-back-again-

Micz Flor

Quick addition (and correct me if I am wrong): Objavi is dealing not only with PDF rendering but also managing all digital formats (e.g. ePub). BookJS is a special treat for the authors: IF you want a PDF rendered at a later stage AND you already have your right page settings for print set THEN BookJS displays your work in the browser AS IF it was already the PDF: page flow and page numbering etc. will display with the right fonts and sizes. A real: what you see is what you get.

However, this is for the PDF rendering. Objavi does much more than that.

Johannes Wilm

You can add BookJS to a simple html page. This will turn it from the web page format ti was in, into something that looks like a number of pages in any Webkit-based browser. If you are running Chrome and hit the print-to-pdf function, you will get a PDF where the pages look exactly like what you just saw in the browser.

Endusers should not have to install BookJS as it will be integrated into both the Objavi PDF Renderer and the Booktype editor in the next version. However, it may be interesting for other projects that try to do page rendering. That's why we split it out as a separate project.

Ross Laird

Thanks for the clarifications. Very helpful. Part of the reason I was confused was that in Adam's post introducing BookJS it seems that the Noridc Cinema book (for example) was created using BookJS; whereas I now see the new blog posting from yesterday that shows that Booktype was actually used (perhaps with BookJS to assist with rendering and previewing in some way). Anyway, some very interesting tools. I will follow this development with great interest, as we are planning to publish a book next semester in the New Media class that I teach at my university.

Johannes Wilm

What happened was that we used Booktype for the content editing. We then
used the old Objavi to create a PDF -- which we then trashed. Objavi
created an HTML file in the PDF creation process that contained the entire
contents of the book. That is what we used and combined with BookJS to make
the actual book. All by hand.

In the next version of Booktype this will all be integrated.

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Ross Laird <<br />booktype-support@lists.sourcefabric.org> wrote:

> Thanks for the clarifications. Very helpful. Part of the reason I was
> confused was that in Adam's post introducing BookJSit seems that the Noridc Cinema book (for example) was created using
> BookJS; whereas I now see the new blog posting from yesterdaythat shows that Booktype was actually used (perhaps with BookJS to assist
> with rendering and previewing in some way). Anyway, some very interesting
> tools. I will follow this development with great interest, as we are
> planning to publish a book next semester in the New Media class that I
> teach at my university.
>
>

Ross Laird

I see. Thanks for filling in these details. Do you anticipate that the BookJS integration with Booktype will be complete within the next few months?

Adam Engst

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Ross Laird wrote:
> I see. Thanks for filling in these details. Do you anticipate that the
> BookJS integration with Booktype will be complete within the next few
> months?

Yes, I'm curious about the timeline for this (and the user-defined
styles mentioned elsewhere) since I could start a pilot project right
away.

cheers... -Adam

Look into my head; follow me on Twitter. http://twitter.com/adamengst
_____________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst: I publish TidBITS and Take Control, write books,
ace@tidbits.com and make useful introductions in the Apple industry.
My work: http://tidbits.com/ and http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/

Ross Laird

Me too. I'm particularly interested in creating a book-in-browser format for one on my books, and it sounds like BookJS can be used for this purpose and customized with a working knowledge of CSS etc.

adam

sure,...you can checkout this experiment

http://data.booksprints.net/dabook2/body.html

adam

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 8:47 PM, Ross Laird <<br />booktype-support@lists.sourcefabric.org> wrote:

> Me too. I'm particularly interested in creating a book-in-browser format
> for one on my books, and it sounds like BookJS can be used for this purpose
> and customized with a working knowledge of CSS etc.
>
>

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