[Textbook-l] Textbook style

[Robert Scott Horning]

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
>
>[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nigelk/Nav
>
>  
>
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.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning