A few notes on books: please check out the latest wikibooks bundle in [[Collections/G1G1/8.2]] -- unfortunately, those are still pdf's. This should change for the next release, hopefully in time for 8.2.1.
Josh Gay has just updated the textbookrevolution.org site -- take a look! HTML books : better tools are needed for neatly-formatted html export from various raw formats. Mediawiki, pdf, doc, and plaintext are four of them. epub and similar books : We also need a bookreader that can parse modern epub formats. "Read", having claimed the default verb, needs to address this -- even if that means no longer simply being evince in a candy coating. Sayamindu is picking up maintainership of read, and as 8.2 heads out the door I'm sure he'd appreciate these and other ideas and suggestions :-) SJ On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 6:07 PM, S Page <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ahh, several topics dear to my heart. > * Browsing to PDFs is problematic for the reasons you identify and more. > * But anyway, prefer HTML with advanced CSS over PDF for documents. > * And prefer SVG over PDF for figures. > > Diane Serley wrote: > >> But when I >> attempt to read one, the PDF is "downloaded" from the library directory >> into the Journal. I had expected that Read would launch and read it >> directly, or that it would appear in Browse. But the download means that >> I have 2 copies of the file in my XO: one in the Library and one where >> ever the Journal is storing stuff... > > That's right. And every time you navigate to the PDF in Browse and do > the download-Journal-launch dance, another copy of the PDF is added to > the Journal's datastore! I wrote up the issues in > <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Read#Many_issues_going_from_Browse_to_PDFs> > , e-mailed "downloaded files and the Journal" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > <"http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-June/015379.html>, see > bugs 8155 and 8330. > > On any personal computer the general principle of saving stuff from the > browser is "first check if you've downloaded it already". On the XO > that even applies to local files for Read that OLPC Library presents: to > re-read a PDF document, kids should restart it from the Journal, instead > of returning to pages in Browse and clicking again. > (I haven't checked, does the Sugar documentation mention this)? > > Thus the nifty friendly "OLPC Library" start page in Browse encourages a > sub-optimal interaction with PDF documents. > > Your idea that Browse should launch Read is what I expected too I'm > pretty sure Browse could pass a URL like http://gutenberg.org/some.pdf > or file:///home/olpc/Library/another.pdf directly to the Read activity > and eliminate the save to datastore and launch from Journal out of the > way. But when this came up on [EMAIL PROTECTED] people raised issues > with the XO's security model; see bug 6958. > > > The best way to avoid these problems is to not use PDF. Even if they > were solved, PDF has lots of downsides as a format for the XO. I filed > bug 7898 to suggest the Sugar activity handbook from Ship.2 not be a > PDF, repeating some of the downsides in > <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Read#Document_limitations.3F.3F> (the > bug was obsoleted when all built-in bundle-archives were removed). The > killer problem with PDF is it doesn't re-layout when you rotate the > screen, so you can't get appropriate margins for both orientations. > >> I made a collection (.xol) of PDFs and it installed fine. > > Can you go back and create nice HTML pages from the source material? > The publisher and others should be willing to help. > > PDF's pluses include that you can use better typography and control the > fonts. But the Mozilla engine under Browse supports advanced CSS (see > <http://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS_improvements_in_Firefox_3>) that > allow book-like typography, see e.g. <http://webtypography.net/toc/>. > And if content required a particular font I think OLPC would be amenable > to installing it, or maybe the library content bundle could. Also, CSS > fonts are coming to the next iteration of the Mozilla engine, so HTML > pages can use custom fonts. > > Besides books, people use PDF for diagrams and figures. But those are > better done as SVG files that Browse can directly render. I filed bug > 7652 that the World Factbook maps that were in the Ship.1 bundled > library should be re-done as SVG. Since SVGs can animate and respond to > JavaScript, someone could do an incredible Browse-based Atlas that lets > you show and hide features like rivers, towns and borders, and even > implement quizzes (hide text labels and respond to clicks). Awesomeness! > >> Am I doing something wrong, or is this the expected behaviour? >> >> Because Browse isn't reading it natively, I'm assuming that Browse is >> not set up to deal with the PDF mimetype. Is there a file I can edit to >> get it to recognize the mimetype? > > No browser can render PDFs natively. But you can use a plug-in to > render PDFs in a browser, just like Browse-with-Totem can play the OGG > video and audio mime types. There is a browser plug-in for Evince, so > the Read activity could be subsumed into the browser. This was filed as > bug 3212 and possibly another bug, closed invalid. I disagree with > closing it; the submitter plaintively asks > "why should the child have to care that PDF books will be in Read and > HTML books will be in Web" > > If someone has Firefox and Evince expertise and wants to experiment on a > Linux box or an XO, they could see how well Evince works as a plug-in, > try passing URLs from the command line to Evince, set up external read: > handlers in Firefox, etc. > > But in my opinion, PDF is rarely if ever the best format for presenting > content on the XO. > > Cheers, > -- > =S Page user:skierpage > _______________________________________________ > Library mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library > _______________________________________________ Library mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library
