[Textbook-l] Textbook style

[Martin Swift]

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

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