[Textbook-l] Textbook style

[Magnus Manske]

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