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From: Stuart Ellis on 4 Jun 2010 03:21
On 4 Jun 2010, at 05:17, Mohit Sindhwani wrote:

> On 4/6/2010 11:55 AM, Run Paint Run Run wrote:
>>> I'd say wiki - if it's in Markdown or Textile, it could be easy enough to
>>> wget everything and make it an acceptable PDF/ e-book style file every now
>>> and then?
>>>
>> Not really. They're quite distinct styles. An offline wiki is trivial,
>> certainly, but it won't have the structure and coherency of a book.
>>
>>
>>
>
> Of course, you're the project owner :P so you know best...
> But, I'm of the opinion that even in a wiki, we could have a table of contents that would map roughly to chapters and sections so that the coherency is maintained. Someone would need to help to keep the contents categorized into a hierarchy (something that books demand and wikis ignore) such that it is coherent.
>
> I guess I'm really pushing for an "editable" e-book... that said, since the source is in git and Markdown (I wish it could be TexTile), changes can be made at source though the barrier is slightly higher..
>
> Cheers,
> Mohit.
> 4/6/2010 | 12:16 PM.
>

-1 to Wiki. I was on a project that tried the idea of developing larger documents with a Wiki, and it just sucked. Wiki UIs are mainly designed for short bits of text, so you end up copying text into an editor, and then double-checking that the page hadn't been edited, and then pasting it back. Edits are often of low quality, one way or another, and need either fact-checking or revision to integrate them into the text to keep it coherent, which is tedious.

---
Stuart Ellis
stuart(a)stuartellis.eu





From: Run Paint Run Run on 4 Jun 2010 08:49
In the absence of a consensus, I suppose I'll keep to this kind of
format ( http://ruby.runpaint.org/methods ) for now. Maybe if interest
picks up subsequently, I'll look at making the chapters editable
similar to what Mohit suggested.

From: Robert Klemme on 4 Jun 2010 08:57
2010/6/4 Run Paint Run Run <runrun(a)runpaint.org>:
> In the absence of a consensus, I suppose I'll keep to this kind of
> format ( http://ruby.runpaint.org/methods ) for now. Maybe if interest
> picks up subsequently, I'll look at making the chapters editable
> similar to what Mohit suggested.

Thanks for your effort! Since you said you are writing a book I
assume you have particular kinds of readers in mind and will give it a
flow so it can be reasonably read from start to end. I don't think a
Wiki is a good container for something like that. If you want to
allow for user added content then it's probably best to have some kind
of commenting functionality (as they do for PostgreSQL documentation,
see http://www.postgresql.org/docs/).

Kind regards

robert

--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/

From: botp on 4 Jun 2010 09:22
On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 8:57 PM, Robert Klemme
<shortcutter(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2010/6/4 Run Paint Run Run <runrun(a)runpaint.org>:
>> In the absence of a consensus, I suppose I'll keep to this kind of
>> format ( http://ruby.runpaint.org/methods ) for now. Maybe if interest
>> picks up subsequently, I'll look at making the chapters editable
>> similar to what Mohit suggested.
>
> Thanks for your effort!  Since you said you are writing a book I
> assume you have particular kinds of readers in mind and will give it a
> flow so it can be reasonably read from start to end.  I don't think a
> Wiki is a good container for something like that.  If you want to
> allow for user added content then it's probably best to have some kind
> of commenting functionality (as they do for PostgreSQL documentation,
> see http://www.postgresql.org/docs/).
>

i think you can add comment feature in wikis.
btw, it would be also nice to include a ruby-format (besides plain
markdown/textile) so as to allow nice/uniformed ruby code formatting
...

kind regards -botp

From: mdiam on 4 Jun 2010 09:40
On Jun 4, 5:55 am, Run Paint Run Run <run...(a)runpaint.org> wrote:
> > I'd say wiki - if it's in Markdown or Textile, it could be easy enough to
> > wget everything and make it an acceptable PDF/ e-book style file every now
> > and then?
>
> Not really. They're quite distinct styles. An offline wiki is trivial,
> certainly, but it won't have the structure and coherency of a book.

+1 for wiki

With the wiki data (e.g; in Markdown format) you could manually
build (impose) the structure of the book, then use ruby to process
the different chapter from the markdown to any other format
(i.e. via LaTeX or ConTeXt).

The advantages are:
- produce high quality pdf document (thank to TeX),
- allow to automatically produce other output format
(immediate html output),
- allow to let someone else translate the book to foreign languages

For sample, the jelix book (a php framework) is automatically
generated to pdf from a dokuwiki to xml docbook, then LaTeX.
the pdf.

http://download.jelix.org/jelix/documentation/en

-- Maurice

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