While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.
Suppose I want to learn from a wikibooks textbook. I open a chapter (sorry, a "module";-) and it looks like wikipedia. That is not bad in itself, however, IMHO it has some drawbacks. First, I'm distracted by the sidebar. If I want to learn about a topic, I don't want to go to the "staff lounge" or the "community portal". And when I scroll down, the sidebar is replaced by - a really blank space. That's all fine on wikipedia, where you come to be part of the experience, or to look up some topic, then leave. Learning from a textbook is another process altogether.
Perhaps even more significant, out textbooks look like web pages. Even the downloadable PDF (screenshot at [1]) looks like a printed web page. I don't know what your textbooks look like, but most of mine (the better ones, actually) don't resemble a web page sent to the printer. Thes have this sidebar, which is not blank like ours, but contains important information, like additional figures, notes, and keywords for the paragraph they're next to.
I'm not sure if that layout is merely done to make the book longer and thus more expensive, but I'd wager there's a good reason behind it. I for one find these things useful and welcome our side-scribbling overlords.
Long story short, I made a mockup [2] of an alternative viewing mode for wikibooks. It currently features only a single page from the Biochemistry book, but you'll get the idea. There's a small book/chapter navigation bar on the top, and a list of headings within the page on the bottom (might not work in IE, but it's just a demo).
The key feature are sidenotes, which are currently done by manually hacked HTML, but could be done automatically. For this, I propose a new extension, <sidenote> or the like, which would include each sidenote. In normal mode, like it is now, it would be ignored, or converted to a <div style='float:right'>, similar to a thumbnailed image. In the alternative viewing mode, it would be rendered like the mock-up.
The extension would likely be hidden by templates: {{sidenote}} for normal text, {{sideimage}} for images with caption, {{sidealert}}, {{sidetip}} etc. with standard icons.
Two questions: * Would this be something the wikibooks crowd would like to use? * Would I have backup from the tech department (I write it, you turn it on)?
Magnus
[1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bookmockup/book_now.png [2] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bookmockup/bookmockup.php
First of all, we should think about what is Wikibooks made for: reading books or writing books. Your idea is not bad for the first purpose, but fails when we focus on the second one. My opion is that we should not make Wikibooks look like a 'conventional' book, because this will complicate creating and improving our textbooks.
Remember Wikibooks mission: we do not host ready books, we are a platform where books can be created and improved; this process never ends. Wikisource is for finished materials.
When someone wants just to read our textbook, we give him "print version" - all chapters in one, no sidebars and obsolete elements. I think our print versions are quite decent; I don't understand what's wrong with http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bookmockup/book_now.png; in my opinion it is great.
When it comes to sidenotes and sideimages (never seen such thing), I'm against them. In the example you have given, they only narrow place for text and look odd; textbooks I use in most cases don't have such things.
Regards,
The real missing thing in Wikibooks is a way to define the structure of the book, in a way understood by the software. Currently the only notion of structure for MediaWiki is the parent-page/subpage relation, but this is clearly insufficient. All the book contents, the ordering of chapters (next, previous chapter), even the chapter hierachy if present (up, down chapter), should be provided using wiki syntax and then profited by the software in several ways. This is something I think comes implicit in Magnus' proposal. As I see it, the important concept of his idea is that of structure and navegability rather than the viewing mode. The later is something obvious once you have the first point implemented.
There is an extension already developed and available in [1] for implementing this concept. Once we had the book structure defined, MediaWiki and external tools, could make use of it for several applications: better printable version, automated all-content pages, automated TOC for the whole book, etc. I definitely think this is something missing in MediaWiki for clearly fitting the Wikibooks goal.
Regards,
ManuelGR
Manuel Gomez wrote:
The real missing thing in Wikibooks is a way to define the structure of the book, in a way understood by the software. Currently the only notion of structure for MediaWiki is the parent-page/subpage relation, but this is clearly insufficient. All the book contents, the ordering of chapters (next, previous chapter), even the chapter hierachy if present (up, down chapter), should be provided using wiki syntax and then profited by the software in several ways. This is something I think comes implicit in Magnus' proposal. As I see it, the important concept of his idea is that of structure and navegability rather than the viewing mode. The later is something obvious once you have the first point implemented.
There is an extension already developed and available in [1] for implementing this concept. Once we had the book structure defined, MediaWiki and external tools, could make use of it for several applications: better printable version, automated all-content pages, automated TOC for the whole book, etc. I definitely think this is something missing in MediaWiki for clearly fitting the Wikibooks goal.
Regards,
ManuelGR
I disagree that this necessarily requires extensions and changes to the MediaWiki software. Many of the navigation tools that you are suggesting can be accomplished through the judicious use of templates add adding structures such as a table of contents module for each book. Now writing those templates is not always a trivial task and does take some digging around reading up on template syntax, but it is something that has been used on many Wikimedia projects including Wikibooks, including for more than just adding "post-it notes" across pages as you are editing them.
The cached special pages on en.wikibooks do not seem to be updating (uncategorized, orphan, etc.). They had been updating weekly for a while, but it's several days late. How can I get them updated? There are some "lost" wikiversity pages that are currently beyond the 1,000 page limit on the uncategorized list, and we did a bunch of work the past week to reduce the backlog in order to make these re-appear so they can be imported (already-imported pages are all categorized as such, so it's handy to be able to see the ones that aren't categorized yet).
-Johnny
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Magnus Manske wrote:
While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.
Hi,
I agree that the presentation of a wikibook is important, as someone is supposed to spend more time on a book than on an article. The problem is that I've never found a practical way to display the content of a book on a webpage. In my opinion, pdf is better, because the complete book is available as a single file (this is better for the user, not for memory use!), the layout of the book is fixed by the editor, and the typographic quality is (can) far better.
This is why I'm working at improving wiki2pdf , even if it is a slow process...
Perhaps even more significant, out textbooks look like web pages. Even the downloadable PDF (screenshot at [1]) looks like a printed web page. I don't know what your textbooks look like, but most of mine (the better ones, actually) don't resemble a web page sent to the printer. Thes have this sidebar, which is not blank like ours, but contains important information, like additional figures, notes, and keywords for the paragraph they're next to.
I'm not sure if that layout is merely done to make the book longer and thus more expensive, but I'd wager there's a good reason behind it. I for one find these things useful and welcome our side-scribbling overlords.
Sidebar text, notes, keywords are indeed valuable for a book, as they tend to "break" the strict layout, and give easy access to some important information. I agree that a small set of extension might improve this. That would be better than workarounds based on templates.
As far as I'm concerned, what I miss most (even in wikipedia, as I haven't contributed to wikibooks yet!) is automatic numbering for equations and figures, as well as a way to reference them in the text. I can't imagine to write a technical book without these. This is bug 5600 http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5600 .
On Sat, Sep 30, 2006 at 05:08:59PM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.
Granted, this is an issue. Perhaps not so much that they don't look like conventional textbooks, but that they are constrained by Mediawiki syntax and XHTML markup.
There isn't much that can be done about it. I'd love to be able to have more control over floats and such, but currently the markup isn't more flexible.
First, I'm distracted by the sidebar.
This can be customized by changing your stylesheet.
Perhaps even more significant, out textbooks look like web pages. Even the downloadable PDF (screenshot at [1]) looks like a printed web page.
Frankly, I don't think the form of your screen-shot is bad for the topic. Again, this can be modified by stylesheets (see: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/media.html#q2) and wiki2pdf might allow for more configuration or layout options (I don't know that software at all, though)
Thes have this sidebar, which is not blank like ours, but contains important information, like additional figures, notes, and keywords for the paragraph they're next to.
Would something like the following be useful? <div style="display: none; float: left; position: relative; left: -160px; width: 130px; padding: .5em; border: thin solid red"> {{lorem ipsum}} </div>
There's a small book/chapter navigation bar on the top, and a list of headings within the page on the bottom (might not work in IE, but it's just a demo).
The "position: fixed" is neat, but not very easily incorporated into the current stylesheet. Currently such navigation aids are added as templates. You could create a class which, in some alternative "reading-mode" stylesheet would render as in your mock-up.
The key feature are sidenotes, which are currently done by manually hacked HTML, but could be done automatically.
Would you see the sidebar usage example above to be a hack? I don't see why this needs an extension rather than a simple template.
Bottom line, your suggestions are certainly valid (at the very least for some books). As I see it, however, these can all be addressed by using more fundamental markup and styling techniques.
Sincerely, Martin
Magnus Manske wrote:
While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.
Suppose I want to learn from a wikibooks textbook. I open a chapter (sorry, a "module";-) and it looks like wikipedia. That is not bad in itself, however, IMHO it has some drawbacks. First, I'm distracted by the sidebar. If I want to learn about a topic, I don't want to go to the "staff lounge" or the "community portal". And when I scroll down, the sidebar is replaced by - a really blank space. That's all fine on wikipedia, where you come to be part of the experience, or to look up some topic, then leave. Learning from a textbook is another process altogether.
This is something I've fought against in many instances, and it should be pointed out that the MediaWiki software that we have tends to encourage this kind of behavior if only because it has been tweaked and specialized explictly for the creation of encyclopedic entries.
Furthermore, a very large portion of the users that come to Wikibooks have mainly experience with Wikipedia (although there are some "home grown" Wikibooks users that hardly touch Wikipedia). Into that viewpoint, it is hardly surprising that many of the modules (not all of them) tend to have a look and feel very similar to Wikipedia articles, and are often even written in a fashion similar to a major "A-grade" Wikipedia article. Indeed, the Wikijunior pages (to give a specific example) almost all have a strong feel of being individual articles very loosly tied together by topic.
Keep in mind, please, that Wikibooks is still trying to define some of these concepts that you are complaining about here. While in a few cases we actually have sufficient content together to actually have something strongly resembling a textbook, clearly we need to move on and try to go beyond the basic concepts found on Wikipedia for article navigation.
Another huge issue is that on Wikibooks each seperate book almost takes on a sense of being its own seperate Wikimedia project, if sufficient numbers of people are involved. This said, the more mature Wikibooks tend to have a unique style almost unto themselves. This also includes often navigation sidebars and more.
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