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Footnotes can be very useful if you want to expand on a topic without interrupting the general flow of your text, such as adding a glossary for technical or topic specific terminology, or adding references for the information you present in your book.

Footnotes

Before inserting a Footnote, you will need to open one of your chapters in the Chapter Editor. Once there place your cursor after the word or phrase that needs a footnote, then click the Footnote button on the toolbar.

Footnotes button on the Toolbar

This opens the Insert Note window:

Footnote Window

From here use the drop-down box at the top of the window to Insert a New Footnote or select an already created note to attach to a second or third position. If you choose New Footnote, then click in the text box below and type in the content of your footnote. Once finished, click Insert, a superscript number is added to the chapter at the position of your cursor. This number is linked to the bottom of the chapter where the content of your footnote is contained in a numbered list with the list number matching the one inserted into your chapter content. At the end of the foot is the superscripted ^ character linking you back to your position in the chapter.

Footnote Example with Single Entries per Footnote

If you choose a pre-existing footnote from the drop-down list and click Insert the list-number for the footnote will be added to your cursor position.  The footnote itself has already been created but it is modified with a second link at the end of the footnote taking you back to the footnotes second referral, the links will now be labelled a, b, etc. relating to the first and then second referral in the chapter to the same footnote.

Footnote Example with Multiple References to each Footnote

In the HTML version of your book all footnotes are placed at the bottom of the page, when exported to PDF footnotes are added to the end of the chapter.

Have a Go!

In your practice book, start adding footnotes to one of the chapters, create several unique footnotes then start repeating some that you have already created.  Observe how the footnotes are arranged at the bottom of the chapter then save it and view the HTML version in the reading section of Booki so you can see how the linking works between chapter content and footnotes.  Finally Export your book to a variety of formats and see how Booki handles the footnotes in each instance.

Have fun and happy writing.

John Curwood

Booki User Guide maintainer.

A quick look the book CiviCRM a comprehensive guide: how we got here, and our plans for the future (originally published on the CiviCRM blog)

We recently got fifty copies of CiviCRM: a comprehensive guide printed on demand for some training events in the UK.  Being able to hand out a 300 page book as a supplement to the training went down really well with participants: holding something in your hands in a world which is predominantly online world is quite reassuring, it seems!

Getting hold of hard copies of the book at short notice was quick and painless. Objavi (FLOSS Manuals new and impressive publishing engine) just worked, creating a great looking PDF that we sent to Imprint, a local printer.  Imprint were a recommendation from the FLOSS Manuals list and I would definitely recommend them to others that need books printed in the UK – they turned the PDF into 50 books in less than 24 hours at the price of £6 ($10) per book and were helpful, fast and professional.

Integrating the book with training was cool, and it made me want to write a little about how we got here, and our plans for the future, so …

How we got here

The current ‘second edition’ of the book is the result of two book sprints and some sporadic contributions between.  As the title suggests, it covers pretty much all of CiviCRM’s functionality.  It also includes introductory sections to help non-profits decide if CiviCRM is right for them, to assist them with project management, and introduce them to the CiviCRM community.  At the back of the book is a ‘developer’ section for people that want to get started extending CiviCRM.

The first sprint laid a solid framework for the book, but there were definitely some rough edges and some gaps that needed filling.  At the second sprint, we filled and smoothed, completing coverage Civi’s components, revising already existing sections, adding the developer section, and finalising a section template that we can use for covering new functionality like the upcoming CiviCampaign.

The second book sprint was held at the same time and place as a code sprint. Each sprint was self contained but we met in the evening to eat and to swap in and out of different sprints.  All in all there were about 30 Civi folks gathered together. Having such a wide range of talents in the same place was quite awesome and led to some unplanned beneficial cross overs. Usability and naming improvements made their way from the book sprinters into the code sprint and book sprinters documented new functionality as it was being developed at the code sprint.

Public reactions

I proudly showed the printed second edition to people at a non profit tech conference a couple of days before the training.  While most people reacted positively, I was surprised by a couple of the reactions I got.  A couple of people, rather than being impressed with the thickness, found the book a little intimidating.  It is worth noting the difference in perspective: one person’s “wow, that is a comprehensive book!” is another’s “wow, that is complicated software!”.

Which brings us nicely on to our plans for the future…

The future

One of the aims of next years book sprint (funding permitting) will be to split the single volume into a number of smaller books.  From a content point of view, this shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.  Each section already follows a pretty well defined structure (with introduction and chapters on planning, configuring, everyday use, etc.), so the comprehensive guide can become Everyday CiviCRM, Planning with CiviCRM, etc.  From a technical point of view, the new Booki authoring engine should allow us to link the same source chapters into different books.  As well as cutting down on maintenance, this should be a good discipline for ensuring the right content is in the right place, and that we really are being comprehensive.

As the book has become more mature, we are beginning to wonder about the relationship between the book and the wiki.  We are seeing more and more people link to the book from the support forums.  And this raises the questions: What belongs in the wiki and what in the book? Where should I document this new bit of information? Is the book just a more stable version of the wiki or do they cater for different audiences?  Is it OK for us to copy from the wiki to the book and visa versa?  I don’t think we have clear answers to these questions yet but we should probably come up with them soon.

Another question we are considering is distribution.  The new version of Objavi gives us a few options that we didn’t have before. We currently host the book at http://en.flossmanuals.net/civicrm, but we could now easily export templated HTML to http://book.civicrm.org.  We could also look at including the book with the download (compressed and without pictures it is only 406kb).  And we can even click to make an ebook version.  Very cool!

A few days ago I facilitated the Google Summer of Code Book Sprint. We had already written one book last year in a 2 day sprint so this year we updated that book and added a second. ‘Flip bits not burgers’ (the student guide) was written in just two days by a great team of experienced GSoC mentors. After writing the book in Booki we output the text to the US 1/2 letter format (8.5 inches x 5.5 inches) which is the closest to the European A5. The book formatted PDF produced by Objavi (the Booki publishing engine) looked fantastic so we printed the interior and I designed a cover in Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/) and printed the color covers. We then cut all the content and had a binding party!

Google Summer of Code book binding party!

To bind we used the Fastback 9 and the results looked fantastic. It was really good to write the book and then print and bind the book ourselves immediately after.

Mentor & Org Admin Guide (right) and Students Guide.

The interior looked pretty cool too.

Interior produced by Objavi in about 2 minutes.

This week a select group of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Mentors are working with Booki to produce two books. GSoC is a program dedicated to paying students to work with Free Software projects for their summer job.

The first book is an extension of the GSoC Mentors Guide written last year at a Book Sprint. This book will be edited and tidied up and new material will be added including a section written specifically for Org Admins. The second book is a guide written for Students that wish to participate in the program. This second book also leads the students through the process of applying and participating in GSoC.

The books will be written over 3 days (Oct 20,21,22) and then exported by Booki to print ready PDF. The PDFs will then be turned into bound books by a local printer and distributed at the GSoC Mentors Summit on the 22nd.

One really cheap way to publish your book and get it out there is to print it on Newspaper.  There are printing presses that cater for newsprint in most small cities and it is an inexpensive medium to print on.  Booki has the ability to export specifically for printing to newspaper, catering for many grass roots groups and organisations around the globe.

Newspaper

To create a pdf of your book ready for printing to newspaper start by clicking on the Export tab of your book’s editing page. Now that your here the first step is to change the Document type to Newspaper (PDF).

Selecting Newspaper (PDF) Document Type

This changes some the settings for how the book content flows making it look good on multi-columnar newspaper and it converts everything to Grey-scale allowing for cheap Black & White printing. It also analyses the Page size and Page width settings to determine how many columns it can fit on the page. Therefore if you use a small page size such as the default Comicbook page size you will only see one column.

So to fully appreciate what the Newspaper (PDF) can do we nee to click on Show advanced options.

Now we just have to set the size of our newspaper, click on the Page size drop box and select one of the newspaper presets listed in the table below (you can use other preset sizes if you wish).  If the newsprint you are using is a different size from the presets select custom from the drop box and enter its width and height (in mm) in the Page width and Page height fields.

Because the Newspaper (PDF) setting automatically sets up columns and converts things to grey-scale the only thing left to do is click on Publish this book and wait for your newspaper to be produced. Once completed click on the link generated to download your exported document.

The Booki User Guide is Exported to 3 different page sizes using Newspaper (PDF), Comicbook, A3 and A2

Have a Go!

After selecting Newspaper (PDF) try a few different page sizes and see how Booki exports to these, start with Comicbook, then go to A3, keep getting bigger and notice how many columns are generated.  Then try entering your own page sizes, make some crazy shaped newspapers and see how they work out.

Have fun and happy writing.

John Curwood

Booki User Guide maintainer.

There are some interesting projects utilising Booki to create books. Some are groups, others individuals, some work with Book Sprints and rapid development strategies, others try the Book Slog…Of course, Booki being what it is, means you can also help these projects ‘get written’ (or illustrated, edited, proofed etc) or you can also just open up the book-in-progress and watch it develop over time.

One project I want to highlight is the 3rd book in a series of 4 by API – the Arctic Perspective Initiative (http://arcticperspective.org).

This project is a large collaborative effort made up of people from all walks of life from all parts of the globe. Many of those involved gathered for a conference in Dortmund (Germany) a few days ago to talk about the project and to also kick start a book on Arctic Technologies. This book is of course being created in Booki and you can follow its progress here (log in first):

http://www.booki.cc/tech-cahier/edit

API is, to quote from their website, :

“Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a non-profit, international group of individuals and organizations whose goal is to promote the creation of open authoring, communications and dissemination infrastructures for the circumpolar region. We aim to empower the North and Arctic peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training. By creating access to these technologies while promoting an open, shared network of communications and data, without a costly overhead, we can allow for further sustainable and continued development of culture, traditional knowledge, science, technology and education opportunities for peoples in the North and Arctic regions.”

API are using Booki as the center for a collaborative process to create a book on Technology in the Arctic.

My role as ‘an educator’ revolves around group processes – namely, Book Sprints. Essentially I facilitate groups of 5-10 people working together in one room over an intensive 3-5 days to produce a book. Zero to book in 5 days (or less). This process is known as a Book Sprint and although it is an uncommon practice most people who ask for and participate in a sprint see it as a Book Production methodology. However I would argue that in all circumstances the collaborators walk away having learned a great deal about the subject they have just created a book about.

I also believe that this process can be used by students to write their own textbooks. Learning what they write and passing the free textbook onto the next years students to improve. I am eagerly awaiting the first enlightened institution that would take this on and I am sure they would be positively surprised by the results – both in the quality of book produced and by what the students learn in terms of content and collaboration.

Book Sprints utilise collaborative environments. The only Book Sprint (1) I know of before we did them (2) used word processing documents – passing these around via email between collaborators – and a wiki for collecting the articles. Part way through the process they gathered in person to develop the outline in a one week intensive ‘Outline Sprint’ and then proceeded to collaborate via email and a wiki over a period of 4-6 months. After the material was complete the group passed the documents through several editing stages. The process cut the standard industry timeline down by about 30-50%. Zero to book in 4-6 months is still pretty good in the publishing industry.

However for FLOSS Manuals 4-6 months was too long. We wanted to do it in 5 days and so we needed a quicker methodology and a better tool set. Wikis might come to your mind immediately as it did to us. However we had already realised that wikis were not built with the right paradigm. Books are very structured and wikis are not. That is the essence of it – I don’t want to get into ‘future of the book’ discussions. Books can be many things, so I am talking here of what ‘most’ people mean by a book. A one piece cover, several hundred pages, table of contents, structured readable and comprehensive content, self contained with very few references to other parts of the document and careful use of outside references instead of a welter of back-and-forth hyperlinks. We built a system that could produce this kind of book – paper books – in a Book Sprint environment. Zero to book in 5 days – that leaves about 3 minutes at the end to produce book formatted PDF ready to upload to a PoD service or send to the local printer. That is what we needed and wikis don’t enable you to do that. So we hand rolled our own. The first generation was built on T-Wiki and we pushed it to its outer limits with extensions built by Aleksandar Erkalovic and a PDF renderer built by Luka Frelih. Now we are onto the second generation – Booki (a BOOK-wikI if you will). It does the same job as the first tool set, but does it better – its easier to use, more flexible, and it supports a greater number of possible output formats and types.

While Booki does a lot and its hard to imagine a Book Sprint without it, there are limits to working digitally in a Book Sprint. Certainly we also experience the highs of surprising networked collaboration. One sprint (‘Introduction to the Command Line’) was written almost entirely remotely and written in 2 days (Mako Hill, FSF Board member and renown hacker said it was the best book on its topic). However there are also limits to digital media and digital networks. I believe that there is less knowledge passed through digital media communication channels when collaborating. I firmly believe this – otherwise we would have all of our Book Sprints remote – it would cut down on logistics and costs. However text based chat does not convey enough information, VOIP is terrible for more than 2 people at a time and even then I wonder at its real usefulness in intensive collaboration, and email is just too slow and the ‘unthreaded’ nature of email will soon drive you crazy in this kind of environment. Microblogging is as good as IRC in this instance – ie. barely useful. Sneaker networks are not only faster but more fluid and they enable better shared understandings, quicker.

In addition I find it is often good to push people out of the screen and into the book. Since we work fast in sprints we sometimes realise we need to clean up structural issues. This often occurs when 2 or more people are working on content that needs to fit together – and it doesn’t. Often we print out the necessary chapters, sit on the floor, and (gasp) cut-and-paste the chapters into each other until they work. Same process as a digital text editor, just with a physical tool set – the result is that it gets better results quicker.

The end result of a Book Sprint is a book. Thats a great thing to have. However there is also a mandate to take care of, and content to take care of. How do you enable this content to live? Books do not live by licenses alone – they need help. They need the original collaborators to find the avenues to keep the content alive. One strategy is to maintain this content themselves although, despite good will, this seldom continues beyond some initial edits immediately after the sprint ends. The original collaborators need to pass on the mandate to others, this is critical for the life of the book. As such I discourage the use of terms like ‘authors’ as this denotes legacies of ownership and does not encourage new contributors to take the mandate to improve the book. Instead the strategies revolve around keeping the participation threshold low (minimising social filters, using open language, making Booki simpler and simpler to use) and welcoming in new contributions. We also welcome forking books. Take a book – make it your own whichever way you feel is best.

However occasionally sprinters, caught up in the fervor of intensive production, often get worried about misappropriation or unethical use and erect barriers that do nothing to help and a lot to hurt. They ask themselves questions like ‘What if someone takes the content and makes money? What if contributors spam the book? What if someone changes the tone of the book? Could contributions ruin it?’ This is the ethical quandry put at the foot of freedom largely by the fears and protective necessities of the proprietary publishing industry, We all carry this a little bit and my response is always ‘let it go’. Let the content be free and you will be happily surprised by the results. The irony is that once sprinters are convinced of this idea they are left ‘fighting’ the default – standard attitudes towards publishing and authorship means its hard work to get people to uptake the freedoms of free content. Book Sprint collaborators (and free content developers in general) often need to put a lot of energy into reaching out to others to get them to take ownership of the material and make changes, but it can be done with the right approach. I am hoping soon we see will the integration of Book Sprints into Curriculum to create and improve textbooks as another way to explicitly pass on the mandate to change and I’m very much looking forward to seeing this strategy develop…

notes:

(1) The idea of a Book Sprint as outlined in the article by Marco Zenaro et al was the brain child of Tomas Krag

(2) Marco Zennaro, Enrique Canessa, Carlo Fonda, Martin Belcher, Rob Flickenger, “Book Sprint” in The International Journal of the Book (Melbourne, Australia, Common Ground Publishing, 2006) Vol 2 Number 4.

written by Adam Hyde, founder of FLOSS Manuals.

Symbols and Formulas can be quite important in generating content for books, symbols give you access to a wide range of characters that get used in language but aren’t available on the keyboard (such as ° in 23°C). Formulas take things a step further allowing you to arrange your symbols in a specialist layout that isn’t available with general typing.

Symbols

Adding Symbols to documents using Web-based editors has often been a hassle.  Most of these editors don’t have an insert symbol button so you would have to open up a Word Processor, use it’s insert symbol feature to add the symbol you need and then copy and paste the symbol from the word processor to the Web-based editor.  While this does work, it is a roundabout method and if you’re writing a scientific book which includes lots of Greek letters in formulas it can become a real pain.

Fortunately Booki’s editor has a built-in Insert Special Character function so you never have to leave the editor when you need to insert μ, β, ºC or any other special character that you require.

Insert Special Character Highlighted in the Toolbar

Simply open up a chapter of your book in edit mode and press the Insert Special Character button on the toolbar. Now click on the Character that you want, when you have finished close the Insert Special Character window.

Formula Editor

The Formula Editor is like a special case of Insert Special Character.  The formula gives you access to the full range of Greek Letters, Mathematical Symbols and Special equation Layouts. This is useful when writing a Serious scientific publication using Booki.

To access the Formula Editor click on the formula editor button.

Insert Formula Button Highlighted in the Toolbar

This opens up the Formula Editor Window

Insert Formula Window with a Formula being entered

The top section of the window allows you to insert special layouts for your equation.

The middle section is a large selection of special characters for use in mathematics.

The bottom section is split into two halves: on the left is the Input panel where you enter the values into your equation and on the right is Preview panel showing how the equation will look when rendered.

To enter a formula start typing in the Input panel, if you need a special equation layout click on the appropriate layout and it will be added to the Input panel. If you need a special character click on the appropriate character and it will be added to the end of your equation. You will notice in the above example that special characters are given specific names in the Input panel which render as the appropriate character in the Preview panel (in this case the word alpha is rendered as the character α).

If you need a special character inserted into the middle of a layout, move the cursor to the appropriate position in the Input panel, delete any original characters that need removing and then type in the name of the special character you need.

When you have finished your formula, scroll down to the very bottom of the Formula Editor window and click OK to insert it into your chapter.

Have a Go!

Special Characters – Go crazy adding special characters to your book, get to know what characters there are that you may want to use in the future.

Formula Editor – Make up a crazy formula to add to your book try by starting with one of the prescribed layouts and then customise it to your hearts desire. Get a feel for how the Input panel works and how changes made there are rendered in the Preview panel. Remember when you have finished, to click the OK button at the very bottom of the Formula Editor window.

Have fun and happy writing.

John Curwood

Booki User Guide maintainer.

Having the right margins can help define the style of your book. Narrow margins with the content close to the edge of the page creates a very different feeling from wide margins that give your page a lot of ‘white space’.  The style that best suits your book will depend on many factors such as the book’s content/subject matter, page size and the intended audience, however in the end it’s your decision.

Page Margins

Your page margins are set when exporting a book so before we begin, go to the edit page of your book and click on the Export tab. To see the margins we need to click on Show advanced options.

Margin Fields in Export Tab

Half way down the advanced options we see the margins fields Top margin, Bottom margin and Side margin.  Enter the distance from the edge of your page to the text in millimetres for each of these margins.

Gutter

The gutter is of interest when creating book formatted PDF files.  The gutter defines extra space on the internal margins of a page to allow for binding. When exporting to book formatted PDF, Booki automatically generates a default gutter, but depending on the page size and binding system used for your book you may need to alter this setting.

Gutter field in Export Tab

To alter the gutter, click on the Gutter field below the margin fields.  Enter the size of your gutter as a percentage of the page width.

Once you have your gutter and margins set click on Publish this book to generate your export file.

Have a Go!

Margins – Start by exporting to Web (pdf). Alter the margins when exporting your practice book, first try margins that hug the edge of the page and then make them large to generate a lot of white space.  Use different values for each of the margin fields (top, side, bottom) and see how balanced or unbalanced a page looks.

Gutter – First do an export to Book (pdf), you will see that Booki automatically generates a gutter when creating Book (pdf). Now change your gutter settings, make it 25%, then drop it back to 5%, see how it affects your page (You may need to adjust your Margin settings to re-balance the page after changing the Gutter).

Have fun and happy writing.

John Curwood

Booki User Guide maintainer.