this is what's new in version 08:
first, as you can see, we've moved to a new title
— “my antonia”, by willa cather — because one
of the intents here is to “clone” the paper-ebook,
in the fashion often called “fixed-layout” format,
in contrast to a more-typical “reflowable” e-book.
for titles that're “born digital”, fixed-layout is a bit
of an abomination, because those books should be
conceptualized as “reflowable” from the outset; but
public-domain books are “canonical” in paper-form,
so it's important our digital workflow can “clone” it.
this “cloning” ability is very important, for example,
you might want to compare your o.c.r. digitized text
against an original pagescan, to check your proofing,
with the kind of layout shown in this particular demo.
this is what's new in version 07:
first, we have installed some "invisible" commands
— activated by typing a word into the "goto" field
(the text-field at the right in the top-row of buttons).
type the word "color", and then press <return>, and
you will get a dialog on-screen with color-buttons
to let you change the back-ground color if you want.
likewise, type one of the following fontnames, and
then <return>, and you'll change the font that's used:
either times or palatino or verdana or arial or georgia.
finally, the web has had audio and video for a while,
of course, so why should people still have to struggle
when we'd like to put such elements into our e-books?
this is what's new in version 06:
the buttons at the sides are now off by default.
you can toggle their display with the “_” button,
located in the lower-right corner of the window.
the top-row of buttons, toggled with the “=” button,
include the tighter/looser and smaller/bigger buttons,
which now trigger a set of “mini” buttons which ease
the task of making larger shifts in the leading/textsize;
executing changes larger than the default 1% increment.
this is what's new in version 05:
the row of buttons at the top is now off by default.
you toggle their display with the “=” button.
big and small buttons now work in 1% increments.
with some fonts, you need to click several times
for a visible difference; one click is not enough.
there is now also a set of buttons to control leading.
the “tight” button gives tighter leading,
while the “loose” button makes it looser.
these buttons also work in 1% increments, so it might
take more than one click to get a visible difference.
so here's the deal...
“we” will be a team. if you can help,
and you want to join us, please do.
the underlying assumption is that
all books will be freely available in
the global cyberlibrary of the future.
these books will be accessible on the
full range of a wide variety of machines,
via the internet, so of course one of those
many viewing platforms will be the web.
sadly, the web-browser cannot be the ideal
platform, mind you, since it's such a crappy
environment, from the perspective of reading.
(ironic, since reading is a big part of the web!)
but nonetheless, we have to put up some kind of
browser-based interface, even if it's weak sauce.
so welcome to this demo of the weak sauce. :+)
it will take approximately 30 iterations for this demo
to become fully fleshed-out, and this is iteration #4,
just to give you an idea about how far we've gotten.
as you see, we're using “moby dick” as our sample text,
mostly to show that -- even with a relatively big book --
the web-app is nonetheless quite responsive and speedy.
the “<” button to your left takes you back one chapter,
and the “>” button transports you forward one chapter.
but you can instead use the cursor-keys if you prefer;
cursor-left moves backward, and cursor-right forward.
further, hold down one of those cursor-keys; you'll see
that this chapter navigation happens extremely quickly.
once the chapters are in my browser-cache, my machine
thumbs through all 136 chapters in less than 15 seconds.
the “^” button at upper-left goes to the top of a chapter,
if you've scrolled down and wanna jump back to the top.
the “=” button, at upper-right, toggles a set of 5 buttons
at the top of the window. the “toc” button jumps you to
the table of contents; there, click a chapter to jump to it.
the “full” button takes the browser-window to full-screen.
(providing, of course, your browser allows the capability.)
the “full” button changes to an “esc” button at full-screen,
so you click that button to “escape” from full-screen mode.
(or you can instead press the <esc> key on your keyboard.)
the “small”, “100%”, and “big” buttons change the font-size.
and finally, there is also a field to the right of the 5 buttons...
in it, you can type the number of the chapter you want to see,
press <return>, and you will jump right to it. the field is there
for platforms like iphone and ipad which summon a keyboard.
if you're using an external keyboard, you don't need to actually
put the number in the field; just type it and then press <return>.
we'll be adding a lot to this web-app, to make it an environment
which is conducive to reading. once we flesh this out a bit more,
if you have suggestions for improvement, we'll love to hear 'em.
it's extremely important to re-state, however, that this is definitely
not some “books-in-browsers” type of philosophical position here.
a web-browser is a lousy environment for reading, so the very best
reading experience will surely be attained by offline dedicated apps.
but the web-browser must be supported for the worst-case scenario.
so position your thinking correctly as you're evaluating this demo...
thanks for dropping by!