Book Status?
  • We were planning to stop using Bookipublisher and to use only Booktype for FLOSS Manuals. So Booktype would need a list of "published books" with PDF download links. Just like Bookipublisher.

    I found out it actually already has a variable called "bookstatus"? So this could basically be set to published/unpublished to create the front page? Can I just take it into use? It just lies there unused. 

    It should also save published ebook versions in a directory and have meta fields to show them. Basically it should just fetch the published file from Objavi, save it in some directory and save the location of the file in some metafield. 

    Adding a little Django news blog would make it possible to remove even WordPress from the current setup of the Finnish site.

    This kind of tweaking would be really easy with PHP, I just don't know Django so well. 
    Post edited by Tomi Toivio at 2013-05-28 10:36:29
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  • And then there are a lot of little improvements that would make it a lot cooler.

    For an example the messaging system could parse usernames and urls into links. And avoid posting messages twice. Actually Finnish site already has a limit to how many messages are shown.

    I wonder if these things actually exist in some Booktype development version? 
  • When it comes to messaging there are couple of nice visual things which could be done:
     - like you mention, parsing usernames and urls into links
     - fold out/in in case of embeded snippet
     - editing existing message (to fix snippet, reupload image)
     - delete messages
     - ... and probably many other things

    Parsing usernames and links is kind of easy to do. This is your chance if you ever feel like learning how to do Django tags! :)

    I already answered over Twitter but it would be good to say it here for other to see :)

    Yes, Book status was added with the idea (there is also Attachment status which is never used) to have books in draft and published books on the front page (visible on the front end). We never got to that part but it is something which is very much needed in some cases. It is also one of those things which is very much determined by user needs, that is why the architecture of Booktype supports user specific front ends where this could easily be managed as separate application.

    Aco
  • I have been wondering about what a collaborative editing platform should actually be like.

    I think that a collaborative editing platform should be like Git, where you can make your own fork of the content and do whatever you want. And then you should have merges, pull requests etc.

    Wikipedia is an example of how collaborative editing should not be done, the idea of Wikipedia constantly deleting huge amounts of content created by contributors is actually nauseating, especially since it is based on an arbitrary groupthink judgement of what seems to be "important".

    So maybe Booktype should have a big "FORK ME" button. You can already copy a book, but it could be more visible.

    The truly evil thing to add would be some kind of a deletionist voting system, where people could propose the removal of somebody else's book. 
    Post edited by Tomi Toivio at 2013-05-28 10:37:29