[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

[Robert Scott Horning]

Anthony wrote:

>On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia
>>project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board
>>for review.  If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow
>>added to the WMF store.
>>    
>>
>
>I'd like to see this process eventually involve much more
>collaboration than it currently does.  Right now the process seems to
>be that someone takes the content offline, builds a pdf, and then
>uploads it.  Can't we make this a wiki process, where the pdf source
>code can be edited online directly, and then the pdf generated on
>demand?  Sure, before the print run starts a stable version has to be
>chosen, but before that it'd be nice to be able to edit things.  It's
>also a GFDL requirement to provide the source code.  Is the source to
>[[Image:Big_Cats.pdf]] available somewhere?
>  
>
Sorry to break this up into two replies, although this is two different 
topics.

The issue right now for editing the PDF file is mainly dealing with the 
markup of whatever system you are using to generate the PDF file.  The 
process I've used in the past is to import the HTML into Open Office and 
do some minor fix-up of the content where HTML doesn't seem to do a good 
job for publication.  This involves downloading higher resolution images 
and clearing out fluff that comes from HTML that looks good on-line but 
doesn't seem to work with a print format.

Some efforts have gone into streamlining this process, including using 
transclusion to make an entire Wikibook available as a single web page, 
and adding the <includeonly> <noinclude> markup tags at various places 
to help determine what is going to be in the final publication.  Still, 
there is unfortunately a bit more hand labor to get the process 
accomplished than I would normally like, and there is some personal 
taste and flavor that goes into formatting a book.  An automated HTML to 
PDF process may be possible, but I do question if HTML is really up to 
the task.

Essentially, this is an issue where there are people with 
editing/processing skills that are not developers, and part of the gulf 
that seperates the Wikimedia contributor/editors from the MediaWiki 
developers.  Certainly an "automated" process would be desireable, but 
at the moment we are doing as best as we can with the tools currently 
available.  Making a Wiki-syntax to PDF converter would be a non-trivial 
task that could be a whole major software project unto itself.  I'm not 
convinced that the results from such a converter would look good either, 
or if it would look very amaturish simply because the content isn't 
designed to be displayed as a PDF for most of the Wikimedia project 
pages.  Certainly PDF to HTML converters (like found on Google) look 
forced and don't seem to work out very well either, although in that 
situation it is mainly to read the content rather than having something 
"pretty" to look at.

BTW, if you want the "source" to Big_Cats.pdf, the full downloadable 
version is at: 
 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Big_Cats/Complete_Edition

It is from this version that the pdf was created, although admittedly 
with some minor tweaks.  It is debateable if this conforms to the GFDL 
completely, but all of the original source material is there in machine 
readable form.  It at least complies with the spirit of the GFDL and we 
are doing as best as we can.  Perhaps the original *.swx files need to 
be uploaded as well, but any major update is going to need to come from 
the original source HTML anyway.  This is an experiment just to test the 
waters and see what direction we really need to head, so certainly any 
criticisms of what is going on are welcome.

Criticisms of creating the PDF and the "source files" can also be made 
to [[b:en:Image:Wikijunior bigcats frontpag.jpg]], which is also 
published under the GFDL but the "source" layers are not available for 
manipulation.  I see these two issues as essentially the same thing.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning